More than 30 participants from European telecom network operators and vendors attend our Industry Workshop on 24 May 2018 in Heidelberg (Germany). The modern ambient of the 11th floor of Print Media Academy offered the perfect stage for lively discussions and demos about effective autonomous network management in 5G.
In the first slot in the morning Pedro Neves, Solutions Architect at Altice Labs, was explaining the details of the SELFNET network management framework, which can help operators to build an autonomous resilient network infrastructure for 5G and thereby reduce significantly the total cost of ownership.
In the second slot Giacomo Bernini, R&D Technical Coordinator at Nextworks (Italy), present the commercial exploitation approaches of SELFNET.
For example, UWS will transfer its research results in 5G and video technologies from the self-optimization use case to Immersive UWS which was launched in April 2017 and will combine Virtual reality and 5G technologies to transform how students are taught and how staff conduct their research.
In the two hour launch break, participants had the opportunity to get first-hand informations from the SELFNET developers at six demo stations, among them:
- AI in 5G – Zero Touch Network in the Self-Healing Context
- Trust Node – Hardware accelerated Self Optimization Use Case
- SELFNET GUI – Your Network status at a glance
- Self-Healing Use Case: Autonomous VNF fault mitigation
- SDN/ NFV Application Management
- Cybersecurity Techniques in the Self Protection Use Case
In the afternoon the panel discussion took place, moderated by David Kennedy, director of Eurescom. Panellists have been Maria Barros, SELFNET co-coordinator from Eurescom, Raymond Forbes from Huawei, Eunice Ribeiro from Ubiwhere, Slawomir Kuklinksi Senior Researcher at Orange Poland, Giacomo Bernini from Nextworks and Kieran Sullivan, co-chair of the 5G PPP Network Management & QoS Working Group from Waterford Institute of Technology.
Slawomir Kuklinksi raised the question for the reasons why until today no telco had yet implementeat a fully autonomous solutions despite the great results form numerous R&D projects of the last years. This triggered a livly discussion between the panelits and the audience. Gert Grammel from Juniper, also SELFNET advisory board member, argued that there is still a considerable risk involved with using AI in networks.
David Kennedy concluded that it seems that it require further and deeper exploration before autonomous network management could become a reality in 5G.
In the last slot, Anastasius Gavras, SELFNET project co-coordinator from Eurescom, gives an outlook on future research topics in the area of autonomous network management and close the workshop by sent our guests off and wish them a safe autonomous flight back home.
