The compass to navigate towards your autonomous network operations journey

As 5G becomes more common and eventually 6G is introduced, network operations will become more complex and require greater agility and minimal manual intervention to ensure complexity is simplified for operations. To achieve this, Ericsson is leading a transformation journey towards Autonomous Operations underpinned by Artificial Intelligence and capabilities such as hyper-automation, streamlining, and orchestrating business processes.

What is the autonomous networks journey?

Autonomous networks are the goal of this transformation, where the networks can self-configure, self-optimize, self-heal, and self-learn, without human intervention. The industry is coalescing around a common view of the journey towards autonomous networks, with five levels of autonomy defined (TM Forum Autonomous Operations Maturity Model). Level 4 is the next aspirational state, where the network can handle complex tasks and scenarios, and where humans only supervise and set policies.

Figure 1. Two sides of the coin: Autonomous Networks and Autonomous Operations

This requires the use of intents between multiple operational domains of the network architecture. The Network of the Future uses intents i.e. expressions of declarative requirements that stem from the specific business needs of a CSP and its customers. Intents aim to reflect business priorities, achieve optimization targets, associate traffic with the correct Quality of Service and Network Slice and monetize assurance and service priorities. The network of the future will be highly self-adaptive, reliable and autonomous.

The need for autonomous operations

On the other hand, Autonomous Operations follows a digital transformation approach to evolve the operating model and associated capabilities including Artificial Intelligence (AI), and intelligent automation needed to manage and optimize CSP networks and their services.

5G networks provide more flexibility and dynamic adaptation in service orchestration and assurance, as well as network resource utilization compared to previous generation networks such as 4G/LTE and 3G.

This in turn enables a wider variety of applications and use cases for consumers and businesses with CSPs (Communication Service Providers) aiming to provide customizable services with detailed agreements on functional and non-functional characteristics that require dynamic adaptation to the network.

With this increased flexibility and dynamic adaptation, the network must be managed in real-time to deliver on these requirements. Concepts like "autonomous networks" and "intent" are needed to drive new propositions and automate the network's state to meet performance KPIs, SLAs, and business outcomes.

The journey of Mobily Saudi Arabia: setting the course towards the Hajj

Rather than aiming for a specific level of autonomy, service providers should focus on the value that each level of autonomy can bring to their network and customers and adopt the solutions that best fit their needs and goals.

A good example of this philosophy focused on working at process scenario level towards clear goals is Mobily, Etihad Etisalat Company brand in Saudi Arabia. One of the strategic pillars of Mobily’s digital journey is to offer evolved quality of services and enhanced customer experience to the end users particularly during major events like the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj.

Every year Mobily faces an immense challenge to ensure the best possible service during this period. With more than 1.83 million international (1.61M) and domestic (0.22M) pilgrims visiting Muslims’ holiest city, the network congestion could severely degrade performance and lead to a subpar user experience. Moreover, without sufficient redundancy and failover mechanisms in place, any network failure or outage during these critical periods could potentially result in service disruptions, exacerbating user dissatisfaction and potentially leading to revenue loss.

The collaboration with Ericsson Managed Services enabled Mobily to enhance the overall level of autonomy in operations during special events. The award-winning solution (AI Ops Award: Best operations solution incorporating AI functionality, FutureNet MENA Awards 2024) is part of Ericsson Operations Engine model and represents a pioneering approach when forecasting and dynamically adjusting the distribution of traffic among multiple core nodes 12 hours in advance. By allocating traffic based on real-time demands and prevailing network conditions, this approach not only enhances network efficiency and reliability but also lays the foundation for an elevated user experience. It's worth mentioning that more than 30% of Mobily's traffic this year was already on 5G, and the number of inbound roamers grew by 75%, while data growth also reached 75%. These figures further shed light on the complexity.

As Eng. Alaa Malki, CTO of Mobily says “Our strategic partnership with Ericsson has contributed greatly to the early adoption of AI operations in the service assurance area. However, navigating the journey toward operations autonomy will be a gradual process where each CSP must decide on the right technology (level of autonomy) to make the proposed service viable and profitable. This is the essence of the "don't chase the badge, chase the value" idea we have put into practice.”

AI intent-based operations: The key to building autonomous networks

Intent-based and autonomous networks will play a pivotal role in advancing network infrastructure by simplifying service definition and network operation, particularly within the dynamic 5G environment. While the objective of AI intent-based operations is to efficiently manage the complexities and variations of services, their implementation is just one part of the autonomous journey, leading toward a simplified and closed-loop environment allowing for almost zero-touch or fully autonomous operations of services.

The opportunities that autonomous operations could offer to service providers extend beyond financial gains. At the same time, building service providers’ confidence in autonomous network operations will be a gradual process and one of the first steps along this journey will be for providers to set their own course based on their objectives.

For further information and to learn more about AI intent-based operations, visit: Ericsson AI Intent-based operations