At the FutureNet World 2023, which took place in London from May 3rd to May 4th, China Mobile’s collaboration with Huawei and their “Digital Twin Solutions for Autonomous Networks” won The Operator Award, the singular honor bestowed by FutureNet World to exemplary operators.
FutureNet World, a premier global summit in the telecom industry, aims to outline the future development direction for the industry, with a focus on network automation and intelligence. China Mobile’s project won the award for the first time after meticulous and stringent review implemented by distinguished analysts from various industry organizations, such as Omdia, TM Forum, ABI Research, and Appledore Research.
Over the past few years, China Mobile and Huawei have been engaged in a collaborative partnership to explore the development of high-level Autonomous Networks (AN) based on the concept of digital twin and have implemented various pilot practices, leading to multiple innovative achievements.
- Computing Force Network (CFN)
Conventional solutions cannot find adequate computing resources and the optimal network at the same time. To address this challenge, China Mobile and Huawei jointly deployed the OTN transport capacity map across many provinces in China, including Guangdong. This innovative solution is used to visualize a combined networking and computing topology, enabling the evaluation of transport capacity online and the recommendation of an optimal network with compute nodes offering adequate computing resources. Additionally, standard northbound interfaces are used to facilitate quick decision-making and agile service provisioning. All this has dramatically reduced the provisioning duration from days to 30 minutes while also enhancing the usage of compute resources by 17%.
- Cloud core network disaster recover (DR) switchover
Conventional solutions rely heavily on manual operations, resulting in prolonged DR evaluation periods. Moreover, these solutions lack the capability to visually represent the DR process. To overcome these limitations, China Mobile and Huawei jointly deployed intelligent DR assistance technologies across many provinces in China, including Zhejiang and Henan, to implement automatic DR simulation and evaluation based on digital twin networks. These technologies have significantly reduced the evaluation time from one week to 10 minutes. They also provide a comprehensive and visual representation of the entire DR process, thereby facilitating its automation. China Mobile has used these technologies to successfully complete over 10 DR drills covering millions of users.
China Mobile remains committed to strengthening its collaboration with Huawei, with the shared objectives of introducing more innovative AN practices and further exploring high-level AN capabilities, including service simulation, AI training, security simulation, and network optimization, by leveraging the power of digital twins, and propelling the evolution toward AN L4 by 2025, empowering a diverse array of industries and catalyzing the digital transformation of the economy and society.
