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This is a summary of the key intelligent operations and network automation trends and announcements at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), which took place in Barcelona on February 26–29, 2024.

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Summary

As the Omdia networks team predicted, artificial intelligence (AI), power efficiency, network evolution, open networks and APIs, and security were all key themes at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. However, AI was the most prominent of these, along with a strong focus on intelligent operations and network automation.

Focus on intelligent operations and network automation

AI topics dominated this year’s MWC, and in parallel with this was an increased number of demos, briefings, and announcements linked to intelligent operations and network automation. At times, it felt like everything aspired to become autonomous this year, from networks to forklift trucks.

Every year, we experience the latest Fira hype. But, as a GSMA GLOMO awards judge, I always find it useful to see how the awards submissions reflect what is happening on the ground. So, it is significant that in the Best Network Software Breakthrough category that I judged, pretty much the shortlist and the winning entry had an autonomous network, closed-loop automation, or digital twins theme to them this year.

These themes were also reflected in several key MWC-related announcements:

  • In Barcelona, Huawei launched its new Intelligent Operations Solution portfolio, a broad-based offering, which includes digital managed services and scenario-based services, as well as the AUTIN intelligent operations support platform that underpins these services. The AUTIN platform’s functionality is regularly updated to make it more service-centric. The latest enhancements to the platform that were unveiled at MWC were focused on key technology areas that included generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), expected demand not served (EDNS), and digital twin technology—the latter is to enable near real-time network status awareness and service-centric simulations.
  • Given the level of attention that GenAI is currently attracting, it is unsurprising that vendors are increasingly announcing portfolio enhancements that GenAI capabilities support. The telecom industry has invested in AI-enabled automation for several years. Still, the latest GenAI wave creates fresh opportunities, especially those associated with network operations and customer-facing use cases.
  • In another set of key MWC announcements, Ericsson unveiled additions to its 5G portfolio that included the following:
    • AI intent-based operations enhancements to the Ericsson Operations Engine
    • AI Explainability (XAI) capabilities are being added to its Cognitive Software portfolio to boost transparency and improve the visibility of the actions that AI solutions recommend to enhance network performance
    • The launch of a new Service Orchestration and Assurance offering to streamline and automate service creation and network slicing.

Ericsson announced 11 new products in the run-up to MWC, with a strong emphasis on four key pillars focusing on more performance, openness, sustainability, and automation.

  • Other announcements included one from VIAVI Solutions (VIAVI) and VMware, in which a joint testbed as a service is used to combine VIAVI’s TeraVM RIC Test with VMware’s RIC to create a digital twin to evaluate and benchmark the performance of RIC applications.

Seeking to address interoperability and integration issues

This year, many of the intelligent operations and network automation-related MWC presentations and briefings emphasized multilayer, multi-vendor coordination capabilities. We believe this is due to the need to address strong telco concerns over interoperability and integration. An Omdia Telco Network Automation Survey published at the end of last year suggests that telcos view interoperability and integration with existing networks and systems as the biggest challenge to network automation; almost 60% of telco respondents see interoperability and integration as the biggest challenge.

Service providers must deal with rapidly increasing scale and complexity in the network environment. The impact of 5G, 5G Advanced, and next-generation technologies and the rapidly growing pace of digital transformation and cloudification drive the need for more intelligent AI-enabled operations. However, telcos must adopt a multidimensional approach to deliver the necessary network automation. Such an approach requires organizational and process changes, new skills, performance metrics, and adopting multidimensional platforms that draw on new technologies, including AI and digital twins.

Digital twin technology is useful in this context because of its ability to simulate and capture real-time operational and performance data to predict and optimize performance or locate and fix problems, especially if it can use graph technology to connect multiple data points simultaneously. Addressing interoperability and integration issues is a priority in a multilayer, multi-vendor network environment. This is also why vendors seek to integrate AI capabilities into their network automation, orchestration, and assurance solutions in ways that use common data models, platforms, and APIs.

Appendix

Further reading

What to Expect at MWC 2024

Telco Network Automation Survey – 2023 (September 2023)

Author

Kris Szaniawski, Research Director, Access, Software & Transformation

[email protected]