PARTNER CONTENT: The 4th Autonomous network Industry forum was successfully held during MBBF2021 in Dubai UAE. Speakers from GSMA, du, LG U+, MTN, Vodafone, Smart and Huawei shared their experience and innovation idea in making the network more intelligent. Autonomous network is now gradually being adopted globally and becomes the necessary capability for the success of full business scenarios (toC/toH/toB). It continuously improves 5G deployment efficiency, maximizes spectral efficiency and energy efficiency, and promotes the sustainable development of multiple services.

Henry Calvert, the head of networks of GSMA, pointed out that large-scale 5G network deployment is accelerating globally, how to reduce costs and increase efficiency is now a common concern among global operators. 55% of global operators are considering improving network automation capabilities. Intelligent autonomous networks will be implemented level by level. Now, 84% of the use cases in the industry are in L3.
To further improve the automation level of mobile networks, the entire industry needs to reach one unified network framework, evaluation system, and classification standards.

Head of Service Operations, du UAE, Abdulla Baghoum indicates that the mobile communications industry needs to consider how to build 5G networks without adding additional OPEX, adding 5G sites while achieve carbon neutrality by 2025. The intelligent energy-saving solution based on AI technologies can effectively reduce OPEX and cope with energy consumption problems without significantly affecting the performance of the network. Joint innovation with Huawei PowerStar reduces 5G network energy consumption by 10% each month in du.

Senior Manager of Network Operations Assurance MTN Group, Mohamed Salah introduced that MTN has introduced autonomous driving network into the 2025 strategic vision to enable self-serving, self-fulfilling, and self-assuring networks to solve the increasing network complexity issue. MTN plans to achieve L4 autonomous driving network in certain scenarios by 2025. It will work with the industry to improve its network intelligent autonomy capability in terms of strategic objectives, hierarchical evaluation system, joint innovative use cases, and industry collaboration.

Digital Transformation Manager of Vodafone, Ionita Cristian,
shared innovative experience of zero touch network operations innovation of VDF with the audience. Digital transformation requires network automation and service agility. Digital network transformation transforms traditional O&M into zero-touch and self-aware operation. Enables O&M engineers to focus on more valuable and creative work and brings better network experience to the end users. Vodafone and Huawei have reached great achievements jointly in intelligent alarm correlation and alarm root cause analysis with Alarm Turbo based on MAE, and will further cooperate in more scenarios.

Mohammad Asiqur RAHMAN, manager of radio network planning and optimization Dept. in Smart Cambodia, introduced that end-to-end automation capabilities are employed to the entire WTTx service development process. In the service provisioning phase, Automatic service provisioning solution WTTx Suite from Huawei helps Smart achieve precise and rapid user development. In the service maintenance phase, fast complaint handling and problem locating help reducing the churn rate. The AI-based iterative multi-parameter optimization reduces the proportion of users with poor QoE by 11.2%.

President of SingleOSS Product Line of Huawei Wireless, Hongbo Ma, released the future-oriented 5 evolution trends of wireless autonomous network 5Go S.M.A.R.T. (Go Simplified, Maximizing, Agile, Robust, Thinking). Based on the wireless intelligence which in-depth combination of network intelligence and site intelligence, wireless autonomous network will evolve along the five trends of 5Go S.M.A.R.T., improving the intelligent autonomy level step by step. In order to assist operators to achieve the strategy of intelligent autonomous network, in wireless domain, iMaster MAE introduces intelligence and automation capabilities into the entire workflow, including network planning, deployment, maintenance, optimization, and service operation, based on the three-layer architecture of site intelligence, network intelligence, and service intelligence. This helps operators achieve efficient deployment, optimal performance, and agile services 5G network.

To achieve the full autonomous driving network, all participants in the industry need to work together in terms of classification standards, measurement systems, use cases collaboration, and equipment intelligence. Huawei will continue to work with carriers and industry partners to collaborate and innovate in the five trends of S.M.A.R.T. to jointly move toward the autonomous network era featuring automatic O&M, ultimate performance, and low carbon.