Operational excellence and reduction of network complexity
In an increasingly 5G-connected world, we need to rethink improving network performance and providing the best customer experience. As operators leverage on network performance to stay ahead of competition, even if they’ve launched 5G early, they are still under heavy pressure to reduce operation expenditure (OPEX) and provide a stellar 5G experience. All this is made even more difficult with the increasing complexity of 5G networks as new 5G use cases arise, and as video traffic and mobile gaming continues to grow. As a result, it places huge importance on the technology to cope with the demand and still deliver the best network at a lower cost.
To get ahead, communications service providers (CSP) must provide their customers with a better network performance today than ever before.
Meeting the challenge with network design and operations software
After demonstrating the full pallet of the NDO software’s capabilities to our partners in ongoing trials to understand and to evaluate the benefits of different optimization software aspects, it became clear that we had a solution that can fundamentally evolve the mobile network design and optimization principles.
By using machine learning, and deep learning algorithms, we can reach unprecedented insights into network performance and customer experience, improving network quality and spectrum efficiency. A great example is when we pioneered machine learning network design for leading Japanese mobile operator, SoftBank.
The benefits are wide reaching, and we’ve identified the key areas in which operators can maximize their network’s potential.
- Revenue protection: where NDO software has helped to improve customer complaint handling capacity by 60%.
- Performance improvement: we were able to deliver a 40% reduction in bad quality cells.
- OPEX reduction: where we demonstrated up to 60% efficiencies related to planning and optimization activities
- Environmental impact: where CO2 emissions showed an 80% reduction from removing drive test activities.
- Capacity planning: we showed 40% less carrier expansions compared to a traditional approach, which made a huge impact on capital expenditure (CAPEX) savings.
AI and cognitive optimization
Our leading NDO software is also used to help us push the boundaries of innovation and demonstrate its benefits. Our offering includes AI-based solutions for optimization that have been leveraged to aid network planning and performance, particularly when it comes to solving complex problems. For example, we collaborated with KDDI on a series of trials in dense urban areas in Japan, and improved network throughput by nearly 10 percent using our AI-based solution.
Through cognitive optimization, we’re driving transformation and harnessing the power of data with our expertise, enabling us to make new propositions using our leading technology. Each year, we’re taking the necessary steps to develop solutions. They include:
- Data mining (making sense of the data)
- Anomaly detection and understanding
- Classification of these anomalies
- Finding out the root cause through analysis
- Recommending beneficial changes and actions
This process allows us to close the loop by implementing the recommendations, and it gives us the edge by creating futureproof thinking. This will also be the way and logic behind how we can onboard very different 5G use cases and monitor the performance simultaneously. As it stands, our analyses show that higher network performance can translate to 15 percent average revenue per user (ARPU) increase for the frontrunners.
Ericsson leadership and expertise in in network design and optimization software across Europe and Latin America
Across Europe and Latin America, we're pushing strong NDO leadership by drawing upon the substantial range of expertise available to us in our network, including AI/Machine Learning NDO data scientists and network design and optimization experts. We’re reaching key technological milestones in our deployment of 5G networks with world-leading telecom partners. One example
The fact is, the more we work with our customers in this area, the more we are constantly told that our optimization software is far more advanced than any other. Our partners validated the potential business impact on both operator operational excellence and Revenue protection. This is also supported by our global capabilities service area NDO, which account for 10 AI patents, seven software development and AI labs, 250 software R&D experts, and 4.2 million cells optimized by AI algorithms.
Operators need to transform and change their ways of working by going from being reactive to predictive—using the power of data. Optimization is changing and becoming a constant process in parallel with the continuous changes occurring in the network. For a successful transformation, operators need a strong partner that has already demonstrated the capability to drive the change and provide results. We firmly believe that this partner is Ericsson.
