In the telecommunications industry, we often talk about the benefits and business value of the mobile communications technology, and how digitalization impacts the economy overall. However, it’s important to acknowledge that the business value of a mobile network is not dependent only on the installed radio equipment. It’s equally dependent on the way the entire network is designed, optimized, deployed and maintained – the full lifecycle of a network. 

With our unique approach that combines innovative digital platforms and service expertise tailored for each phase of the network lifecycle, we help our customers achieve fast and tangible business outcomes. Let’s have a closer look at how we do this.

Digital network design and optimization – 30 percent faster time to target performance

A true revolution has taken place in the domain of network design and optimization. 5G networks are much more complex than previous generations of radio networks. They leverage dynamic technologies such as massive MIMO and beamforming, new high-capacity radio variants for a wide range of frequencies including mmWave, as well as frequent software updates for performance and efficiency enhancements. In the network planning phase, we must take into account the entire network topology, utilizing extremely exact 3D maps and high-performance analytics tools for predicting the network behavior and ensuring premium mobile user experience. 

To make network design and optimization much faster and more accurate than ever before, we have created an integrated, cloud-native analytics tool ecosystem with interoperable tools that can automatically transfer data between one another. It powers all of our design and optimization services. The analytics ecosystem uses the latest radio product specifications with up-to-date information at any time. We have hundreds of thousands of beamforming patterns embedded, which means that our system is able to identify the optimal selection of beam patterns for any deployment scenario. Concrete results in a customer project include 30 percent better throughput and 10 percent coverage extension at the cell edge. With these analytics capabilities, our experts help customers achieve their target network performance more than 30 percent faster compared to traditional methods.

Digital deployment – 30 percent faster time-to-market

After the fast and precise network design phase, it’s time to deploy the network. At Nokia, we orchestrate the entire deploy process using a unified digital platform – from site acquisition and site engineering to project management, telecom implementation, work of subcontractors, and finally, real-time site acceptance. 

Let’s take a closer look at the site engineering phase. It’s a critical step in the deploy process, affecting all subsequent steps and the quality of the network implementation. The old way of performing site engineering typically involves lots of people and paperwork, as well as the manual workload of converting the collected data from physical forms into site design and bill of material. There are also plenty of risks for human error in the mix. 

With the digital deployment approach, our designers model a digital twin from network data. The digital twin based automated design approach is able to consider the unique conditions at each site and create an optimal solution much faster and more accurately than any conventional design process allows.

In a recent customer project, we achieved a 30 percent decrease in time to market at first time right quality which created a significant business impact for our customer.

Digital network care – 30 percent faster incident resolution 

Even the best-of-class networks encounter incidents. To ensure seamless mobile user experience, the availability of network assets need to be kept at the highest level. 

With Nokia Digital Assistant, support engineers have quick access to relevant network data and previous incident resolutions through an intuitive, AI-based chat collaboration tool – in fact, it’s the industry’s first chatbot. We have seen that 15 percent of network incidents can be resolved with help of the Digital Assistant, saving valuable time and effort.

We have made troubleshooting faster with our AI/ML based framework and knowledge management system. With automated log collection, a unified view of contextualized network data and a repository containing tens of thousands of resolved cases, our AI/ML tools extract and recommend the next best actions for troubleshooting the incident. Concrete results at our customer networks confirm 30 percent faster incident resolution – with potential for further acceleration.

A combination of service expertise and digital platforms is the key

At Nokia, we have created a unique symbiosis of service expertise, digital platforms and AI/ML based analytics. Our experts have up-to-date knowledge of latest Nokia products, comprehensive RF expertise and a close working relationship with our research and development teams. 

We have developed a digital services culture with easy to consume services that help you maximize the business value of your network investments throughout the entire network lifecycle.

Visit our Services for Mobile Networks page to find out more about how you can become a performance and sustainability leader, accelerate time-to-market of new services and maximize the productivity of your people and assets. 

You can also meet our team at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to discuss more!