Huawei Yang Chaobin: Embracing the Intelligent Era with Highly Autonomous Networks

[Barcelona, Spain, February 27, 2024] At MWC Barcelona 2024, on February 27, international industry association TM Forum held their Autonomous Networks Summit 2024 themed "Autonomous Networks L4 is Coming". Huawei's Board Member and President of ICT Products & Solutions Yang Chaobin delivered a keynote where he talked about "Embracing the Intelligent Era with Highly Autonomous Networks".

TM Forum proposed the concept of autonomous networks (AN) in 2019. In just four years, a solid consensus has been reached on AN as the way forward for automation and intelligence. With a few leading operators already having achieved L3 autonomy in key scenarios, the value of AN is becoming increasingly clear. Yang said: "The upgrade from L3 to L4 will accelerate value creation. It will reshape interaction models to change how O&M is performed, reshape the system capabilities that improve O&M efficiency, reshape the service processes that improve operations efficiency, and reshape integration models to shorten service TTM. This will help operators achieve their strategic goal of L4 autonomy."

Breakthroughs in key technologies are the foundation for enhanced value creation with L4 autonomy, he went on to explain. "Telecom foundation models are a key technology that enables autonomous network upgrades from L3 to L4 autonomy. The Huawei Telecom Foundation Model provides role-based copilots and scenario-based agents that help operators empower employees and improve user satisfaction."

At the event, Yang also presented their Net Master offering, an example of the foundation model's applications. Net Master has already been piloted in China Mobile's IP network O&M in Guangdong province. Net Master comes with both the copilot and agent functions to help field engineers and NOC O&M engineers work efficiently. With Net Master, 90% of faults can be automatically diagnosed, and the fault locating time can be shortened from hours to minutes.

In addition to presenting these technological breakthroughs, Yang called on industry partners to collaborate to improve the Autonomous Networks Framework (ANF) and develop a unified assessment system. He also noted that operators should focus on talent and process transformations, and technology vendors will need to focus on expansion of and innovation in key scenarios that can boost value creation for operators.

Huawei plans to actively foster industry best practices for telecom foundation models, facilitate L4 autonomous networks, and build higher-quality networks.