Interview
At Connected North this year, we caught up with David Hall, VP of Technology Solutions (EMEA) at Mavenir, to discuss the North’s 5G landscape and why AI-enabled operations is quietly becoming one of the most exciting areas for the new technology
The UK’s 5G rollout continues at pace in 2024, gradually bringing faster and more reliable wireless connectivity to underserved areas across the country. But while higher capacity and low latency are certainly benefits for typical mobile subscribers, for Hall, 5G’s real value comes as an enabler of new services.
Fixed wireless access, for example, has proven hugely successful at leveraging the mobile network to deliver broadband connectivity to locations underserved by fibre.
“5G is a brilliant alternative to fibre access,” said Hall, highlighting the work of Yorkshire-based ISP Quickline. “We’re seeing speeds in the many hundreds of megabits being delivered over a cell radius of up to 15km from a 5-Watt radio solution. It’s an incredible way to get service to the underserved.”
Now, with the advent of advanced AI, wireless services are set to evolve even more rapidly. According to Hall, however, the biggest gains from the technology may not come from flashy chatbots or novel services, but rather even more efficient intelligent automation.
“There’s rightly a lot of hype,” said Hall. “But I honestly believe it will be in the areas we fail to look at […] that makes the biggest difference. Something like AI-enabled operations. The ability to do root cause analysis, to be able to address problems and incidents in minutes and seconds rather than hours and days.”
“To be able to find out what’s going on, dispatch a field team, fix things faster, and improve services for customer is something we as a customer fundamentally believe in,” he added.
These advantages will only be further developed in combination with other emerging technologies, like AI-supported digital twins and Open RAN.
“From an Open RAN perspective, the development of the RIC (Radio Intelligent Controller) will be a service creation environment for AI,” said Hall. “And with the advent of open interfaces like the O1 and the E2 allowing you to dynamically change the RAN to meet demand – such as at an event like this one – that’s really exciting.”
“To me, AI is this great undiscovered country and from a Mavenir perspective on our RIC, the future is there to be found. We often talk about how to reduce costs – well here’s one area.”
You can view the full interview from the link below