At the Global Telecom Awards (GLOTEL Awards) ceremony held in London, United Kingdom on 1 December 2022, China Mobile, China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei won the “Automation Initiative of the Year” award for their innovation and practice in autonomous core networks. This is a remarkable achievement for China Mobile Zhejiang being the first operator in China to receive this award, as GLOTEL Awards, instituted by the ICT research group Informa, recognize innovation and excellence in companies involved in advancing and transforming the telecoms industry. China Mobile’s cloud-based core network O&M transformation and Huawei’s autonomous driving network (ADN) solution for core networks have received good reviews from across the industry and significantly contributed to automated and intelligent O&M for core networks.
China Mobile Zhejiang features China Mobile’s regional cloud-based core networks with wide coverage, large network management capacity, and complex network architecture. It faced great challenges in O&M of its regional cloud-based core networks. It became difficult to ensure the running of a secure network just by increasing manpower or by using expert experience.
Guided by China Mobile’s autonomous network policies, China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei’s cloud core network ADN team jointly carried out a series of innovative practices for autonomous core networks. These practices built an intelligent end-to-end fault defense system for core networks, covering fault prediction, detection, demarcation, and recovery, and realized three key O&M transformations for the regional cloud-based core networks.
Risk prevention and fault detection: The O&M mode changed from passive response to proactive risk prevention. Capabilities such as intelligent KPI anomaly detection and multi-dimensional incident aggregation were developed to realize sub-health detection and prevent issues from escalating.
Fault diagnosis: Manual analysis transformed into automatic machine diagnosis. By using intelligent clustering and reasoning algorithms, HTTP link and KPI deterioration faults are accurately demarcated within 10 minutes, greatly improving troubleshooting efficiency, user experience, and network stability.
Fault recovery: Manual switchover based on expert experience replaced by real-time visualized intelligent DR based on automatic simulation. Based on the HEBO algorithm used by intelligent DR evaluation, optimal flow control policies for the entire network are generated quickly, ensuring 100% success of DR fault recovery. In addition, a large screen clearly displays the DR service processes, facilitating control over the switchover. Currently, four cross-region DR switchover drills involving millions of users have been successfully conducted.
China Mobile Zhejiang’s O&M transformation project for regional cloud-based core networks sets a good example for joint industry innovation, provides valuable technical and practical experience for the industry, and will effectively drive the transformation towards digital and intelligent O&M of global telecom networks. In the future, China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei will carry out extensive and in-depth cooperation, continue to build top autonomous core networks, and work with global operators and industry organizations to evolve towards higher-level autonomous core networks.
