- Article & Insights
- September 10, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Nephio is Kubernetes-based intent-driven automation of network functions and the underlying infrastructure that supports those functions.
Automation
Network automation replaces manual configuration and operations with software-driven processes, ranging from scripted tasks to fully autonomous, self-optimizing networks. Driven by the complexity of 5G standalone, cloud-native architectures, and multi-vendor environments, operators are pursuing higher autonomy — often framed against the TM Forum’s autonomous networks levels — to cut costs, speed service delivery, and improve reliability. Automation increasingly relies on AI and closed-loop systems that sense, decide, and act with diminishing human intervention. For operators and enterprises, the practical path runs through incremental autonomy: automating well-defined tasks before attempting end-to-end self-operation. This channel covers network automation across RAN, core, and operations — including orchestration, closed-loop control, and the AI techniques behind autonomous networks — with analysis of where automation is delivering measurable results and how operators are progressing toward higher levels of autonomy.
- Article & Insights
- September 10, 2022
- Hema Kadia
The Dickensian duality succinctly characterizes where we are with 5G — pushing towards monetization is challenging, commercially-available network slicing is fledgling at best, but 5G promises rewards for those enterprising and persistent.
- Article & Insights
- September 10, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Earlier telecommunication systems were proprietary and purpose-built systems developed on a monolithic architecture. These systems ensured that telcos or enterprise entities were struck in a vendor lock-in model, scaling up on different telco-grade applications was time-sensitive, and innovation and automation depended on strategies adopted by OEMs. But time has shown us how telecommunication systems have fundamentally changed and evolved for good.
- Usecase
- September 2, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Samsung will provide its advanced private 5G network solutions to an array of entities in the public and private sectors — including energy, safety, water resource management, medical services and medical education.
- Usecase
- August 24, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Private 4G/5G provides Teltech's 200,000 sqft warehouse to retain the accuracy needed for inventory levels, without allocating costly and hard-to-acquire human resources, allowing them to keep more focus on higher-performing functions.
- News
- August 11, 2022
- Hema Kadia
DoT invited applications from enterprises willing to set up private 5G networks to undertake demand studies for direct spectrum assignment.
- Usecase
- July 20, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Airport operator Fraport and NTT Ltd., a leading global IT service provider, are building Europe’s largest private 5G campus network at Frankfurt Airport (FRA). With the conclusion of their partnership agreement for this research and cooperation project, the two companies are making an important contribution to further advancing the digital transformation at Germany’s most important aviation hub.
- Usecase
- July 4, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Virgin Media O2 Business has switched on the UK’s first 5G-connected hospital with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust – a provider of mental health services in the United Kingdom. The switch-on is part of Maudsley Digital Lab’s series of digital health and innovation trials funded by NHS Digital, with the private 5G network providing dedicated connectivity for mission-critical digital health use cases for both clinicians and patients.
- Article & Insights
- July 4, 2022
- Hema Kadia
An in-depth interview with Geoff Hollingworth, Chief Marketing Officer at Rakuten Symphony covering Rakuten Mobile's Open RAN Journey, including the rationale behind opting for Open RAN solution, the current state of their Open RAN deployment, their success, the challenges they addressed, the solution approach, architecture blueprint and recommendations to operators on the Open RAN journey.
- Podcast
- June 29, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Explore the pioneering pathway of Rakuten in the telecom industry, navigating through Open RAN and a software-centric approach. Discover insights into how openness, transparency, and innovative mindsets are reshaping connectivity and uncovering new possibilities in the realm of 5G, network scalability, and global standards. Join us as we delve into the future of telecom, where Rakuten, Open RAN, and a new era of technological advancements converge to redefine the industry.
- Usecase
- June 28, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Umlaut launched a private 5G standalone Open RAN network in Aachen, Germany, in collaboration with Airspan and Druid Software.
- Usecase
- June 24, 2022
- Hema Kadia
Arburg launched 5G campus network to test innovative applications such as autonomous transport systems, industrial robots and automated production processes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between automation and AI in a telecom context?
Automation, in its traditional form, generally follows pre-defined rules and scripted logic: a specific condition triggers a specific, predetermined response, with no real interpretation or judgment involved beyond what was explicitly programmed in advance. AI adds the capacity to learn from data, recognize patterns that weren’t explicitly anticipated, and make more nuanced decisions about what action makes sense in a given situation, even one the system hasn’t seen in exactly that form before. In practice, most modern telecom systems combine the two: AI analyzes a situation and decides what should happen, while automation infrastructure actually executes that decision reliably and consistently across the network, a combination often described as the foundation for agentic AI.
What is ‘zero-touch’ network operation, and how close is the industry to achieving it?
Zero-touch network operation describes the long-term industry goal of running networks with minimal direct human intervention, where the network itself handles configuration, fault recovery, and optimization automatically and continuously. It’s a meaningful aspiration rather than a fully achieved reality; the industry is progressing toward it in stages, with specific functions, like automated fault detection or dynamic capacity adjustment, achieving meaningful levels of automation well before the broader vision of an entirely self-managing network becomes reality. Standards bodies including ETSI have working groups specifically dedicated to defining the requirements for zero-touch network and service management, reflecting that this remains an active area of ongoing standardization rather than settled, widely deployed technology.
Why is automation considered essential for managing modern 5G networks specifically?
5G networks are substantially more complex than earlier generations for several compounding reasons: they rely heavily on virtualized network functions running across cloud infrastructure rather than fixed dedicated hardware, they support network slicing, meaning managing multiple distinct virtual networks with different performance guarantees simultaneously, and they often combine equipment and software from multiple different vendors rather than one integrated supplier. Traffic patterns also shift constantly and unpredictably as device density and application types continue to grow. Attempting to manually manage this level of complexity at the scale of a national or global network simply isn’t realistic, making automation effectively a practical requirement for operating a modern 5G network reliably at all.
How does automation relate to network orchestration?
Automation and orchestration are closely related but distinct concepts. Automation generally refers to executing a specific task without manual intervention, like automatically restarting a failed process or adjusting a configuration parameter. Orchestration refers to the broader coordination of multiple automated tasks and virtualized network components across their full lifecycle, deciding where different network functions should run, how they should scale, and how they interact with each other to deliver a complete service. In practice, orchestration systems often rely on underlying automation capabilities to actually carry out the individual tasks they coordinate, providing higher-level coordination while automation provides the lower-level mechanism for reliably executing decisions.
What are the risks of relying heavily on automated network systems?
Heavy reliance on automated systems introduces specific risks alongside its clear efficiency benefits. If an automated system makes an incorrect decision, that error can potentially propagate quickly and broadly across the network before a human notices and intervenes, compared to a manual process where mistakes tend to be more contained. There’s also a risk of reduced visibility and understanding among human staff over time, since heavily automated systems can create a gap between what the network is actually doing and what engineers fully understand about why, particularly as AI-driven decision-making becomes more involved. Operators generally manage these risks by maintaining careful guardrails for automated actions, expanding autonomous scope gradually as confidence grows.
How has automation changed the day-to-day role of network engineers?
Automation has shifted network engineers’ day-to-day work away from repetitive, manual configuration and troubleshooting tasks and toward higher-level responsibilities like designing automation policies, overseeing AI-driven systems, and handling more complex or novel problems that automated systems aren’t yet equipped to resolve independently. Rather than manually configuring each new service or personally diagnosing every fault, engineers increasingly spend time defining the rules, guardrails, and escalation criteria that govern how automated systems behave, then stepping in directly for situations that fall outside those parameters. This represents a meaningful skills shift, with growing demand for engineers comfortable working with automation platforms and AI systems alongside traditional networking expertise.
What’s ‘closed-loop automation,’ and why does it matter?
Closed-loop automation refers to systems that don’t just execute an automated action once, but continuously monitor the result of that action, compare it against the intended outcome, and adjust automatically if the result doesn’t match expectations, creating a self-correcting cycle without requiring a human to manually verify and re-trigger each step. A closed-loop system managing network capacity, for example, might automatically increase resources in response to rising traffic, then continuously monitor whether that adjustment actually resolved the congestion, and make further automatic adjustments if it didn’t. This concept is considered a meaningful step toward the zero-touch network vision, since it moves automation beyond simple one-off actions toward genuinely self-managing behavior based on real-world feedback.
