Huawei has announced a plan to integrate AI into networks through RAN Intelligent Agents, aiming to enhance network productivity and transform O&M, user experience, and services. This initiative is set to begin with 10,000 sites and 1,000 engineers across five cities within six months.
28 June 2024 – At the MWC Shanghai 2024, during the 5G-A & AI Roundtable, Eric Zhao, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Wireless Solution, unveiled Huawei’s strategic plan to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into networks. This initiative focuses on developing an ecosystem of Radio Access Network (RAN) Intelligent Agents in collaboration with operators to enhance network productivity. The first phase aims to involve 1,000 site engineers and cover 10,000 sites across Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Bangkok, Jinan, and Shenzhen within six months.
Following three years of significant efforts, the telecom sector has seen the evolution of 5G-A from concept to reality, marking 2024 as the inaugural year of commercial 5G-A. 5G-A has demonstrated impressive advancements in network, business, and device developments. However, mobile networks now face increasing challenges related to complex operations and maintenance (O&M), diverse network characteristics, and varied experience-driven operations. In response, Huawei has proposed the integration of AI into networks by building RAN Intelligent Agents, which can transform network O&M, user experience, and services, thereby boosting network productivity. These agents provide copilots that support role-based chatbots and agents for scenario-based solution automation.
Reshaping O&M: The RAN Intelligent Agent enhances efficiency by streamlining processes. An example is Huawei’s AI-based field maintenance engineer copilot, which autonomously generates solution policies using extensive expert knowledge to significantly boost efficiency. In one instance, it improved the handling efficiency of an optical path fault by tenfold.
Reshaping Experience: The RAN Intelligent Agent enables networks to autonomously optimize user experience and energy saving. Optimization is automated through multi-dimensional high-precision real-time sensing and the generation and delivery of optimal policies. In a region with 223 cells, the RAN Intelligent Agent has operated stably for thousands of hours, maximizing performance while minimizing energy consumption. This collaboration marks the first instance of Huawei working with operators to implement such automated network O&M.
Reshaping Services: The RAN Intelligent Agent supports experience-driven service operations through real-time evaluation of network resources. This enables operators to provision new services on demand and ensure a consistent service experience. The 5G-A livestreaming assurance package exemplifies this innovation, providing fruit farmers with reliable uplink speeds to reach customers via livestreaming, showcasing how operators can innovate business models to accelerate monetization.
“Our goal is to bring AI to networks. To achieve this, we will transition from being a solution provider to a co-builder of intelligent networks. We believe that the co-evolution of RAN Intelligent Agents and networks will generate extensive business value, transform networks more swiftly, and lead our industry into a new era of intelligence,” Zhao concluded.
