After three years of arduous efforts, the telecom sector has seen 5G-A progress from vision to reality, and 2024 has been hailed as the first year of commercial 5G-A. To date, 5G-A has displayed quite impressive performance in terms of network, business, and device developments. Now, mobile networks face growing challenges related to complicated O&M, differentiated network characteristics, and diverse experience-driven operations. In line with this trend, Huawei has proposed bringing AI to networks, that is to build RAN Intelligent Agent that can reshape network O&M, experience, and services. This method of bringing AI to 5G-A networks will prove effective in boosting network productivity. The RAN Intelligent Agent provides copilots that support role-based chatbots and agents that support scenario-based solution automation.

Reshape O&M: RAN Intelligent Agent boosts efficiency by simplifying processes. An impressive example of this is the field maintenance engineer copilot that Huawei has launched. As the first of its kind, the copilot is an AI-based assistant that autonomously generates solution policies based on extensive expert knowledge to significantly increase efficiency. During a field case, it facilitated the handling of an optical path fault with tenfold efficiency.

Reshape experience: RAN Intelligent Agent enables networks to autonomously optimize experience and energy saving. The optimization is automated based on multi-dimensional high-precision real-time sensing and the generation and delivery of optimal experience and energy-saving policies. In an area covered by 223 cells, RAN Intelligent Agent has been operating stably for thousands of hours, automatically maximizing performance while keeping energy consumption the lowest possible. This is the first time Huawei has worked with operators to implement such automated network O&M.

Reshape services: RAN Intelligent Agent enables experience-driven service operations through the real-time evaluation of network resources. This allows operators to provision new services as soon as they are needed and ensure deterministic service experience. The 5G-A livestreaming assurance package is incredibly helpful in this regard. As the world’s first livestreaming package of its kind, it provides fruit farmers with the deterministic uplink speeds that they need to reach customers through livestreaming, offering a good example of how operators innovate business models to accelerate monetization.

“Our goal is to bring AI to networks. To achieve this, we will, for our part, shift from a solution provider to a co-builder of intelligent networks. We believe that the co-growth of RAN Intelligent Agent and networks will create more extensive business value, transform networks more rapidly, and lead our industry into a new era of intelligence,” Zhao concluded.