Australian telecommunications company Telstra has launched Ericsson's 5G Advanced Automated Energy Saver (AES), which it says will allow the company to manage network operations based on defined business intents in an "advanced, intelligent, and automated fashion." The system optimises resources and energy consumption in real-time based on observed traffic flows, ensuring seamless customer experiences, the companies announced in a statement this week.
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Energy Efficiency and Customer Experience
This marks the first deployment of a 5G Advanced energy-saving feature in Telstra’s network, with AES seen as a stepping stone towards a more advanced, intelligent, and automated network that enables more sustainable operations, the companies said. Through the use of intelligent systems that autonomously manage energy, Telstra will be able to balance network and service management with energy savings, without compromising customer experience.
Ericsson said AES is part of its software solutions for 5G Advanced, which prioritises energy efficiency and management. Intent-based automation is highlighted as a key technological pillar of programmable networks.
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Key Features of the 5G Advanced AES
"Today, energy efficiency features are activated or deactivated manually based on parameters that do not directly reflect customer experience. Furthermore, optimally setting the parameters manually at each individual site for that sweet spot between energy savings and network performance is extremely challenging for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) today. This makes it a perfect use case for intent-based automation," the official release noted.
Ericsson explained that AES in its initial release orchestrates energy-saving measures based on real-time data, optimising the NR Massive MIMO Sleep function by dynamically finding ideal benchmarks for activating or deactivating antenna branches. This approach ensures that user experience is maintained and energy is saved during both low-traffic and high-demand periods.
Unlike previous manual solutions, AES enables easy configuration of user experience levels on individual nodes, allowing for the automatic and continuous optimisation of feature parameters. This helps Telstra enhance network efficiency and support its sustainability goals without compromising service quality or network performance.
With this deployment, Telstra and Ericsson are not only implementing the AES feature but also evaluating other automation use cases, such as Automated Carrier Aggregation, the official release said.
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Sustainability in Telecommunications
Telstra's Network Engineering Executive said, "Our collaboration with Ericsson on the Automated Energy Saver (AES) is a key step to start the intent-driven ways of advanced, intelligent and automated networks. The AES feature is showing promising results as we test, validate and optimise the feature in our live commercial network. Our key objective in implementing intent-based solutions is to optimise performance without impacting the experiences of our customers. We look forward to working with Ericsson to introduce additional automated solutions that support our customer experience while improving the efficiency and sustainability of our 5G network."
Ericsson concluded that the introduction of the Automated Energy Saver (AES) for NR Massive MIMO Sleep in Telstra's 5G network demonstrates how network performance can be balanced with environmental responsibility.
