AI can increase the accuracy of user experience-based network planning to increase agility and add intelligence to resolving experience issues. Read how.
By Bill Tang, President of Global Technical Service, Huawei
In 2016, Huawei started to apply AI to business processes and the technical work involved in serving its customers, integrating more than 30 years of industry experience into deploying machine intelligence and machine learning (ML) models on its platforms. This technology enables us to provide higher-quality and more efficient services, and more powerful capabilities for developing solutions for our customers.
After three years of successful practice, Huawei Service has accumulated a set of human-machine collaboration methods for designing and implementing service solutions, and built a digital platform of knowledge and models, as well as a training and certification system for new talent.
Agile network construction
We apply AI to each phase of 5G network construction to increase the accuracy of network planning and make rollout more efficient. Multiple data points from areas covering the 5G business, users, and evolution of existing technology are used with ML and iterative computing to quickly and accurately create plans for different scenarios. Technologies such as photogrammetry, optical character recognition, voice recognition, and computer vision are introduced in the survey, design, commissioning, integration, and acceptance phases to continuously improve engineering automation and quality of delivery.
Huawei is also exploring integrated digital delivery equipment to improve the operational efficiency of sites. Its Integrated Service Delivery Platform is shared with customers, equipment vendors, and partners for project delivery management. Information and instructions from the operator, equipment vendor, and partners are automatically exchanged during project implementation, which makes communication smoother, management smarter, and network construction more efficient.
Intelligent O&M
The co-existence of 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks drastically increases the number of connections between people and things, providing a wide range of services for users but also increasing the number of service requests and issues facing O&M personnel. Data analysis shows that network O&M problems are increasing by 5 percent annually.
In 2019, Huawei Service provided more than 580,000 cases of technical support on more than 1,700 networks worldwide. Conventional O&M using people and isolated O&M tools isn’t sustainable. The introduction of AI for human-machine collaborative IT operations (AIOps) is the preferred choice.
AIOps O&M will not mean breaking the O&M system and abandoning existing tools. Instead, an O&M knowledge platform using existing models can drive the evolution of existing domain- and phase-based, human-dominant O&M to human-machine collaborative O&M.
AIOps won’t substitute people; instead, it will enable them to play a greater role with the assistance of machines. O&M talent will take new positions such as network policy engineers, orchestration engineers, and data analysts. People will focus on more important roles in intent design, troubleshooting and key decision-making.
Smart operations
5G is ushering in a new era of communications. It will bring better services, applications, and unprecedented experiences for consumers. It will also create an opportunity for operators to break the conventional "pipe" business model, enabling them to develop new digital services, explore new business models, and foster new industry partnerships.
Huawei has completed an experience model for the first batch of 5G services, released new experience and network construction standards, and built an AI-based experience management solution with service-network synergy to provide real-time, dynamic adjustment of service experience and network policies. With its convergent data service operations platform and intelligent engine, Huawei helps operators accurately and efficiently attract new users, promote user activity, retain users, and increase value, transforming their conventional operations into smart operations.
Huawei will increase investment in its service experience lab and continue to explore the use of digitalization and AI to more quickly resolve complex user experience problems and prepare for more service scenarios in the future.
Open ecosystems
We believe in simplifying things for customers by dealing with the complexity ourselves. Huawei Service abstracts rules, models, and algorithms from a large number of successful practices and encapsulates them in an open, unified technical platform for customers and partners to use. We want to lower the threshold for applying AI technologies, making them more available and easier to use. Operators and global partners can develop new talent with new methods and skills based on the company’s Digital Transformation Practice Center.
Huawei will continue to invest in and improve the capabilities of AI-powered technical platforms by exploring intelligent and agile network construction, intelligent O&M, smart operations, and improved user experiences with operators, industry organizations, and global partners.
