Telenor and Ericsson successfully co-create Agentic AI for radio controls and expand innovation partnership
On the back of a fruitful first year of a research and innovation partnership, Telenor and Ericsson today announced that they have co-designed a proof of concept for an Agentic AI system that learns to optimize capacity and corresponding power consumption of the Radio Access Network (RAN).
Agentic AI is a type of software that can perform tasks autonomously on behalf of a user by designing its workflows. As such, the AI has “agency” to make decisions, solve complex problems and interact with external environments beyond the data that it has been trained on.
Vegard Tingstad, Head of Mobile Access in Telenor Norway says, “This is a truly exciting innovation in our field, which has been made possible by training AI agents on real world data in a simulated environment, following Telenor’s live RAN parameters.”
The simulated results indicate up to 4% reduction in energy usage for radio units, which comes on top of using existing power saving features on the Telenor network today.
Rita Mokbel, Head of Global Customer Unit Telenor at Ericsson Group says, “The Agentic AI system has the potential to revolutionize the world of network management, augmenting or replacing existing manual processes with automated processes to improve network performance and reduce costs. We continue to strengthen our R&D collaboration with Telenor and are looking to drive innovation beyond energy saving in radio access networks.”
Both Telenor and Ericsson are collaborating on RAN automation and optimization, 5G positioning, private networks and explainable AI in mobile networks. Another key area of exploration is the use of rApps – RAN automation applications which run on Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform, the company’s open network management and automation platform. This is supported with many parts of the Ericsson portfolio thorough a coherent series of technologies, solutions, and services to automate, improve quality and reduce complexity in the radio access network.
Cathal Kennedy, Acting EVP and Group Chief Technology Officer in Telenor says, "The most exciting aspect of this partnership is that it enables us to accelerate our own innovations by harnessing collective intelligence and broader partner ecosystems to bring successful innovations faster to market. rApps and Ericsson's open network management and automation platform are important assets facilitating it.”
The initiative fully aligns with Telenor's and Ericsson’s joint ambition to advance autonomous network capabilities and accelerate the broader ecosystem innovation, maximizing use of the advanced technologies such as AI into the mobile networks where it can have the greatest impact.
“We plan to leverage our innovation partnership with Ericsson to co-create energy efficient, trustworthy, and resilient networks. In doing so, we move closer to realizing our AI-first telco vision in Telenor” says Kennedy.
Erik Ekudden, SVP and CTO in Ericsson Group says, “Collaboration within the open ecosystem is vital to advancing network capabilities and achieving sustainable operations. Telenor’s participation in the rApp Directory initiative reflects our shared commitment to driving innovation and delivering meaningful societal impact.”
The collaboration is expected to deliver a range of significant outcomes, including unique AI research insights within telecom domain, testing and deployment of AI solutions in live test networks, validation of use cases and business models that accelerate open innovation and drive growth in AI-native telecommunications.