At this MWC22 event, the topic of adding intelligence to the communication network is very hot, and the display and discussion content of the automatic driving network is higher than the wave, which implies a huge opportunity for change.
Autonomous driving networks are the only way for operators to transform digital intelligence
With the advancement of digital and intelligent transformation, all kinds of connections are growing exponentially, and their complexity is even more than enough, at this time, the operator's network construction and operation and maintenance work, if it still relies on expert experience and staff skills, will inevitably be inadequate. Therefore, the introduction of new technologies such as artificial intelligence into the construction and operation and maintenance of the network, and the autonomous driving network that continuously improves the level of automation came into being.
In the tide of autonomous driving networks, China's three major operators are undoubtedly at the forefront. At present, they have all invested in relevant practical explorations and have continuously achieved phased results:
1. Guangxi Telecom introduced automatic driving network technology to achieve intelligent energy saving, automatically customized different energy-saving strategies for different sites, and ensured KPIs and user perception while maximizing energy saving, and achieved an energy-saving effect of more than 12% of the LTE base stations of the whole network.
2. Jiangsu Mobile realizes 20-minute early warning of 133 types of events by building the "network event" intelligent closed-loop and early warning prediction mode of the 5GC new network, reducing the recovery time by 35% and reducing the occurrence of group obstacles by 30%, and reducing the disaster recovery preparation time by 70% in 44 high-risk scenarios, so that the network can move towards self-healing.
3. Inner Mongolia Unicom realizes intelligent network operation and maintenance through the automatic driving network, effectively reduces costs and increases efficiency, and supports Inner Mongolia Unicom's digital transformation goals. In a short period of time after the launch, a network anomaly covering 4 league cities was identified 5 hours in advance, avoiding a potential accident.
For operators, all these application scenarios and behaviors using autonomous driving networks will not only improve network response speed, improve user ARPU value (average revenue per user), but also extend more service operation methods and profit models. Such a win-win situation is obviously something that everyone is happy to accept.
The realization of L3-level commercial use must be put on the agenda
Judging from the current progress of the industry and operators, the hierarchical and hierarchical realization of autonomous driving networks has gradually entered the core strategy of operators. Most operators already have clear evolutionary goals. In 2021, the white paper survey released by TM Forum and industry partners shows that more than 80% of the 42 independent operators surveyed believe that fully autonomous driving networks will be deployed on a large scale within 10 years, and 70% of operators hope to reach L3-L4 levels by 2024.
Judging from the series of actions of operators, it is a medium-term goal to achieve the evolution and upgrading of network operation and maintenance to L4-level "autonomous driving networks" in 2025. The short-term goal is to accelerate the early pilot of L3 and achieve large-scale commercial use of L3 by 2023.
This is both an exciting business opportunity for industry and a clarion call to accelerate the maturation of autonomous driving network technology.
Huawei's ADN solution makes L3-oriented evolution feasible
Achieving L3 scale commercialization in 2023, this ambitious goal cannot be achieved overnight, is the industry ready?
At the just-concluded MWC22 event, Huawei's L3 intelligent O&M solution debuted, showing the scenario solutions and best practices of ToC intelligent O&M, ToB dedicated line e-commerce, and ToH quality home wide, helping operators evolve their autonomous driving networks for L3 and accelerating digital and intelligent transformation.
What are the hard-core black technologies behind Huawei's L3 intelligent O&M solution? What is the current practical effect on the live network? Huawei's latest information has announced five major black technologies, namely IntelligentRAN enabling wireless network green energy saving, 5G core network intelligent disaster recovery assessment, IP network digital map intelligent tuning, optical line intelligent calculation optimal recommendation, and optical transmission link intelligent risk prediction. Huawei integrates real-time perception and local inference capabilities at the resource layer. Based on the principles of endogenous intelligence, single-domain autonomy, and cross-domain collaboration, Huawei's scenario-based solution for L3 autonomous networks can help operators jointly improve network value indicators.
Evolution of L3 for ToC Scenarios:
For example, Huawei's IP backhaul data indicators increase 800+ KPI to 3000+, enriching the perception of the network; in the network resource operation layer, focusing on improving single-domain autonomy, Huawei's intelligent fault management is aggregating millions of alarms into thousands of events; taking Henan Mobile's deployment as an example, transportation tickets have been reduced by 48%, supporting 27 kinds of transportation fault identification.
Evolution of L3 for ToB Scenarios:
For example, the new OTN card supports improving SLA awareness from the minute level to the millisecond level; by using iMaster NCE and AUTIN to support intelligent diagnosis of ToB service SLAs at the network resource operation and business operation layers, respectively, more than 10 value-added service orchestrations with connections and more than 2,000 network APIs are simplified into 25 service intent APIs. Taking Tianjin Mobile as an example, the market share increased by 4PCT within one year after the transformation, and more than 8,000 ToB special lines were newly ordered. Order issuance and order issuance time has been reduced from months to minutes and days.
Evolution of L3 for ToH Scenarios:
For example, the new OLT smart card supports quality perception from the network level to each service level; end-to-end quality improvement services in network resource operations iMaster NCE and business operations layer ADO; more than 30 potential user layers that provide cross-domain (O+B) data; and more than 20 QoE bottleneck analysis. After Zhejiang Huzhou Mobile implemented Huawei's high-quality home wide solution, QoE poor users dropped by 43%. The marketing success rate increased to 68%.
Achieving large-scale commercial use of L3 in 2023 is an exciting but arduous challenge, which requires us to start the pace of L3 level evolution from now on, need more innovative technologies and more pragmatic and reliable solutions, and build an industrial system with multi-standard organization collaboration to give full play to the expertise of industry partners. At the MWC22, Huawei's ADN's "bright sword" gave a good example, which marked that the automatic driving network from quantitative change to qualitative change will bring about a great leap in operator productivity, and operators urgently need to match the advanced production relationship of high-end automatic driving network to better adapt to the needs of digital and intelligent transformation.
This article has been published in the People's Post and Telegraph