Artificial intelligence, it seems, is the answer to most questions these days and it was no different when the audience of the recent Green Network Summit were asked to vote in a poll focused on network power reduction strategies.
The question put to them was: How can telcos most efficiently reduce their energy-consumption levels?
Seven possible answers were provided and respondents could select as many as they deemed applicable.
A significant majority, 69% of respondents, voted for the option ‘Use AI and data analytics for real-time ops management’. This is certainly a sign of the times, but not a knee-jerk reaction to the current high levels of AI hype, as telcos have been testing and implementing AI-enabled network management tools for some years already, particularly those that can help to automatically power down mobile network sites when they are not in use (or are not expected to be used). Orange, for example, explained as long ago as 2020 how AI tools were helping to reduce radio access network power consumption – see Orange’s ‘test and learn’ approach to AI.
