PRESS RELEASE

Many of the telecoms industry’s biggest names took to the stage at TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks (AN) Summit in Copenhagen to discuss the taking autonomous networks to Level 4

Industry leaders from Telefonica, Vodafone, China Mobile, Zain, MTN, AIS, EANTC, and Huawei gathered at the Summit and delivered keynote speeches focussing on AN. They spoke to an audience representing over 150 global operators, each seeking to learn the latest progress and achievements related to Autonomous Networks.

From conceptual consensus to deployment at scale, AN has made great progress after more than four years of development. Over 14 operators across the world have released their AN strategy of reaching Level 4 by 2025, with 70% expecting to reach Level 3 and beyond by 2025.

To drive the development and adoption of AN further, TM Forum released the AN Whitepaper 5.0 as a guide for all operators to implement AN, with all the speakers joining the Whitepaper launch ceremony at the Summit.

Aaron Boasman-Patel, the chair of the TM Forum AN Program, said in his presentation: “We recently launched the AN Manifesto to accelerate the adoption of autonomous networks and I am delighted to see 31 large CSP and vendor members become founding signatories in such a short time – this signifies the critical role autonomous networks is going to play in CSPs operations. Additionally, we launched the new the AN Whitepaper R5.0, which saw contributions by 64 partners. In this release, we renewed the Four Elements Methodology as the AN Framework (ANF), which will act as the AN Journey Guide for operators while adopting.”

Aaron Boasman-Patel, the chair of the TM Forum AN Program

Juan Manuel Caro, Director Autonomous Networks of Telefonica, said: “1) Agility, Intelligence, Efficiency, Quality, Sustainability are a set of Program Foundational Drivers guiding us in our Transformation journey, focusing on single autonomous use cases first and AI, then progressing to more complex , cross-domain use cases; 2) Defining an automation architecture (Network Brain Heart and ways of working) and hierarchy based in AI algorithms embedded in every layer 3) Established executive committee with our CTIO and we committed a 3-year plan with KPI based on autonomous network and the autonomy and sustainability goals and quality goals.”

Juan Manuel Caro, Director Autonomous Networks of Telefonica

“To operate the world’s largest network based on the principle of “service value and technological innovation, China Mobile is dedicated to improving endogenous network capabilities and end-to-end automatic NMS support capabilities, and to widely deploying more intelligent applications,” said Zhiyi Luo, Autonomous Networks director of China Mobile while sharing China Mobile’s best practice.

Zhiyi Luo, Autonomous Networks director of China Mobile

Boonchoung Tansuthepverawongse, Head of Network data and OSS Platform from AIS, said in his presentation: “After another year of great efforts, AIS is never wavering in the strategic goal of becoming a Cognitive Tech-Co to unleash digital customer experience excellence. Along this journey, AN have always played a significant role in forming the basis for enhancing network reliability, network quality, operation efficiency and most importantly, boosting AIS business growth.”

Boonchoung Tansuthepverawongse, Head of Network data and OSS Platform from AIS

Mohamed Salah, Head of network operation and transformation at MTN Group, said: “MTN continuously making innovation by value-base automation program under MTN’s PACE technical strategy. The scenarios (such as NPS improvement) are selected with “services-networks-value streams” 3-dimensional model. So, we can improve our AN level and capture the value autonomous networks during this evolution journey.”

Mohamed Salah, Head of network operation and transformation at MTN Group

Carsten Rossenhoevel, Co-Founder & CTO, EANTC said: “Realistic AN tests and assessments are an important success factor for the development of the TM Forum Autonomous Networks ecosystem. EANTC and Huawei jointly completed the first independent AN solution test in the IP domain.

Carsten Rossenhoevel, Co-Founder & CTO, EANTC

Sam Wang, General Manager of Huawei ADN Solutions said: “Practices and technologies are the two core drivers for Autonomous Networks. Huawei will continue to invest in the scenario-based solutions, root technologies such as foundation models, and enablement services to drive the industry forward. And the industry should be more open and cooperative to build a telecom foundation model to support richer business application scenarios.”

Sam Wang, General Manager of Huawei ADN Solutions

More and more operators are exploring AN,and actively sharing their implementation experience, helping to spread these important lessons across the industry. Undoubtedly, this kind of sharing, discussion and collaboration will inspire the real innovation and change for paving the way to highly Autonomous Networks.