Category: NGMN News

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The outline of a framework for autonomous networks based on AI

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NGMN outlines framework for autonomous networks
based on AI 

 

The mobile communications industry has been provided with new guidance on the building blocks needed for autonomous networks that encompass Artificial Intelligence (AI) thanks to the publication of NGMN’s ‘Automation and Autonomous system Architecture Framework – Phase 2’, released today.  

The latest updates provide guidance and direction on the use cases, requirements, and architectural principles to embrace interoperable, multi-vendor and standards-based autonomous networks that will help to manage the increasing complexity of the evolving 5G Advanced ecosystem.  

“AI has huge potential to revolutionise the way we plan, build, operate and maintain networks, the services we offer and our ability to respond rapidly to customer needs,” said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “This publication provides a further foundation for the mobile industry to move forward together by developing and embracing a standards-based approach to autonomous networks.”  

This framework outlines architectural considerations for enhancing operational capabilities through AI and Machine Learning (ML), enabling operational capabilities beyond typical human response times amid growing networking complexities, while guiding standards development organisations in delivering a more customised, user-centric experience. 

“With the ever-increasing complexity of networks and the move towards disaggregated and cloud-based architectures, it is more fundamental than ever that we manage that complexity by introducing AI at all levels of our networks and operations,” said Michael Irizarry, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, UScellular. “UScellular is proud to have led this activity working alongside our partners at NGMN. We strongly encourage the industry to adopt this guidance when developing the industry standards that are necessary to ensure autonomous networks can be delivered through open and interoperable standards.”  

The autonomous system architecture framework is intended to serve as guidance in the development of inter-operable and market enabling specifications, for the continuing advancement of an automated and self-adaptive 5G ecosystem of heterogeneous access, virtualisation, forward-looking service enablers and emerging usage scenarios.  

 

Topics covered in the publication include: 

 

  • Management of complexity 
  • Network, service and device evolution 
  • Autonomous System Management and Orchestration and the role of Large Language Models (LLMs) 
  • Co-operative technologies and processes 
  • Use cases 
  • Security and privacy 
  • Role of industry standards 

 

The publication can be downloaded from here

The publication was developed with input from across the industry, with NGMN’s membership comprising operators, vendors, and research institutions. This collaboration enables NGMN to offer strong guidance on key industry issues, driving progress on today’s most important topics, including NGMN’s Strategic Focus Topics: Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks, and 6G. NGMN encourages all stakeholders across the value chain to join the Alliance in this endeavour. 

Further information and all NGMN publications can be found on the website at ngmn.org. 

 

 

About NGMN Alliance 

 

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation. 

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours. 

 

Press Contact 

NGMN Alliance e.V.
Elisa Dwyer
press@ngmn.org
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Press Office
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Join the NGMN Alliance 

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Press & Industry Briefing baner

Press & Industry Briefing @MWC 2025

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona / Spain // by

Mobile World Congress / Barcelona / Spain / 03 March 2025
NGMN Press & Industry Briefing 2025

 

The annual NGMN Press & Industry Briefing will take place in March 2025 at the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona.

Alongside our Chairman and CEO it will feature further Members of the NGMN Alliance Board.
They will jointly review last years’ achievements and provided an update on strategy and topics for 2025.

Please find information on previous P&I Briefings and materials here.

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NGMN FORUM

Munich, Germany // by

09 September 2024 – Munich, Germany

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Green Future Networks- A Roadmap to Energy Efficient Mobile Networks

New guidance on reducing energy consumption in mobile networks

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Dusseldorf Germany, 02 July 2024.

Today, the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) published “Green Future Networks: A Roadmap to Energy Efficient Networks,” offering new guidance and recommendations on reducing energy consumption in mobile networks. This comprehensive roadmap aims to enhance energy-saving methods for MNOs and the wider industry.

This latest NGMN publication outlines 16 different energy saving techniques and intelligent solutions that are currently used or under development in the industry. Supported by real-world data, the publication highlights the energy saving potential of each solution and classifies each by type and by the time needed to develop and deploy them.

“Reducing energy consumption while maintaining service performance is a key ongoing challenge for the industry,” said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “NGMN’s Green Future Networks Programme continues to provide the industry with valuable actionable guidance by pooling the very best of industry knowledge and shaping clear recommendations.”

According to the publication, energy consumption can be reduced through process optimisations, engineering and operational improvements, and the deployment of recent technologies. This is the latest phase of NGMN’s Green Future Networks programme, building on the previous publications that addressed the short-term solutions that mobile network operators (MNOs) could deploy.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to better plan and manage networks and match planned and operational capacity to predicted traffic is a key new addition to a number of the identified solutions. The publication outlines that AI can help estimate energy consumption, AI algorithms can help MNOs make improved energy saving decisions and highlights the importance of identifying low energy efficiency sites.

Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Group CTO at Orange added: “Finding ways to reduce energy consumption and meet our climate goals is of utmost importance to the industry. The solutions span multiple domains: better network planning and engineering, improved network management, the application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and the development and use of new technologies. Only by working together and collaborating within industry alliances such as NGMN can we achieve these goals.”

As part of the publication, MNOs are encouraged to share wireless and RAN infrastructure and utilise the network resources to limit energy consumption and carbon emissions. It is also recommended that standards development organisations enhance interworking between mobile networks and energy suppliers as a method to reduce carbon footprints and costs, while maintaining service availability.

“Energy reduction, the use of renewables, and the continued delivery of high quality mobile services are non-negotiable cornerstones of how the mobile industry must operate now and in the future,” said Luke Ibbetson, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Head of Group R&D at Vodafone. “Vodafone is proud to have acted as co-lead for this initiative within NGMN and will continue to actively lead and support this important work going forward.”

The publication was developed with input from across the industry, with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes. NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour, namely Green Future Networks.

 

The publication can be downloaded from here.

The collaboration between NGMN’s partners helps drive the most important subjects in the industry today, including NGMN’s Strategic Focus Topics: Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks and 6G. NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

Further information and all NGMN publications can be found on the website at ngmn.org.

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

Green Future Networks- Metering in Virtualised RAN Infrastructure

New Recommendations for Measuring Energy Consumption in Virtualized Networks

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Dusseldorf Germany, 04 April 2024.

Today’s publication by the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN), titled ‘Green Future Networks: Metering in Virtualised RAN Infrastructure,’ offers key recommendations to the industry regarding the measurement of energy consumption in virtualised RAN networks. The publication was jointly developed by the NGMN membership, including Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), vendors and research institutes.

“Addressing the challenge of managing and minimising energy consumption is paramount within our industry,” remarked Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “Through this publication, the NGMN Alliance delivers vital recommendations for industry standards, facilitating more precise and real-time estimations of energy consumed by virtualised or cloud-native network functions.”

“Sustainability is a considerable concern for MNOs and their customers,” emphasised Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Group CTO at Orange. “Accurate measurement of energy usage in our networks and associated carbon emissions is essential. This publication marks a crucial stride towards fostering greater transparency in energy consumption within virtualised infrastructure.”

This latest NGMN publication highlights the necessity of enhancing current 3GPP Virtual Network Function (VNF) / Cloud Network Function (CNF) energy consumption estimation frameworks for more precise measurement of energy consumption by VNF/CNF on shared IT/Cloud infrastructure. The publication offers several recommendations to Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) to accelerate the development of enhanced frameworks.

Additionally, the publication underscores the potential of utilizing Redfish® by DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) along with open-source tools like Kepler (Kubernetes-based Efficient Power Level Exporter) and Prometheus. This combination enables MNOs to perform network-wide, real-time, and accurate estimations of IT-infrastructure performance and power consumption. These estimations are regarded as accurate enough to be effectively considered as ‘measurements’.

The publication emphasises that operating models will influence MNOs’ ability to manage the performance and energy consumption of vRAN functions. It suggests that APIs between Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and MNOs may need to replace standardised FCAPS (Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, and Security) interfaces if not exposed by the CSP.

“Bringing together the industry to tackle our shared challenges, unlocking opportunities and providing crucial guidance to the industry is NGMN’s core mission,” stated Anita Doehler, CEO at NGMN Alliance. “This publication further advances the industry’s capacity to deploy disaggregated, virtualized and cloud-native architectures, all while effectively managing energy consumption and environmental impact.”

The publication can be downloaded from here.

The collaboration between NGMN’s partners helps drive the most important subjects in the industry today, including NGMN’s Strategic Focus Topics: Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks and 6G. NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

Further information and all NGMN publications can be found on the website at ngmn.org.


About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

240306_Telesemana_Interview_AD

Why should mobile operators – and the wider ecosystem of vendors, integrators and researchers – join the NGMN Alliance?

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Why should mobile operators – and the wider ecosystem of vendors, integrators and researchers – join the NGMN Alliance?

Find out from our CEO Anita Döhler who talked to Rafael A. J. and TeleSemana.com at MWC Barcelona about NGMN’s primary messages and the significance of global collaboration to the progress of the industry. She also outlined the two essential operator publications: the 6G Position Statement and the Cloud Native Manifesto – a route to cloud native networks built on the needs of operators for enabling greater efficiency in operations and faster time to market for new services.

Anita talks about the challenges of disaggregated networks, how NGMN is focused on strategies to reduce carbon footprints and what’s coming next with 6G.

Watch the interview here.

Find out more about the Cloud Native Manifesto.

Find out more about the 6G Position Statement.

We invite interested industry players to join our endeavour.

 

PRESS & INDUSTRY BRIEFING

Board Members Showcase Global Telecom Industry at Press & Industry Briefing at MWC

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Barcelona, Spain, 27 February 2024. The annual NGMN Press & Industry Briefing at Mobile World Congress 2024 took centre stage at the Deutsche Telekom booth showcasing a stellar lineup of senior industry experts representing different geo-regions of the globe. The Alliance underscored the significant advantages derived from its unwavering commitment to provide impactful guidance in the areas Route to Disaggregation/Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks, and 6G. By fostering collaboration among Mobile Network Operators, Vendors, System Integrators, Research Institutes, and other players of the value chain, NGMN’s Work Programme is positioned to have a lasting impact on the trajectory of the mobile telecommunication industry, ensuring ongoing innovation and progress with value for end-users and ecosystem players.

The Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom, Arash Ashouriha, alongside Anita Döhler, CEO of the NGMN Alliance, conducted a comprehensive review of last year’s accomplishments and provided an overview of the strategy and agenda for 2024, including NGMN’s global biennial Industry Conference & Exhibition which will take place in September 2024 in Munich. Firsthand perspectives and expert insights on the two recent NGMN Publications ‘Cloud Native Manifesto: An Operator View’ and ‘6G Position Statement: An Operator View’ were shared by Board Members of the NGMN Alliance, including Carlos Fernandes (DT), Jerome Birot (TELUS), Laurent Leboucher (Orange), Luke Ibbetson (Vodafone), Narothum Saxena (UScellular), Takki Yu (SK Telecom), and Yuhong Huang (China Mobile). Together, they delved deeper into key trends, innovations, challenges, and guidance, shaping the mobile industry. NGMN Board Members were available for a Q&A session afterward.

Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board, underscored the Alliance’s remarkable achievements, noting, “Our Alliance has garnered international recognition for its contributions and the impact to the industry benefiting not only mobile network operators but also the entire ecosystem.” Additionally, he emphasized the significance of a collaborative approach within alliances like NGMN in today’s challenging landscape. Ashouriha highlighted that only by operators confronting industry challenges collectively, can the industry effectively overcome technical, economical and geopolitical obstacles.

Anita Döhler, CEO of the NGMN Alliance added: “We take pride in our diverse team of Board Members representing different geo-regions of the globe, a manifestation of our commitment to tackling the most pressing issues and opportunities and fostering genuine collaboration for the advancement of the global telecommunications industry. We extend an invitation to all stakeholders across the value chain to join our Alliance in our crucial endeavours.”

The briefing underscored the significance of two recent key publications by NGMN that are exerting a considerable influence on the industry landscape. The first, the Cloud Native Manifesto: An Operator View, delineates seven fundamental principles deemed essential for the realisation of open, interoperable, and highly scalable cloud-native networks. This manifesto steers the industry towards the effective adoption of cloud native technologies, emphasizing the transformative potential they hold.

Meanwhile, the 6G Position Statement: An Operator View represents a significant call to action within the mobile industry. It advocates for a paradigm shift in the approach to introducing new technology generations, particularly focusing on the impending transition to 6G. The statement offers comprehensive guidance encompassing various key requirements and principles vital for navigating this evolution. By providing a roadmap for future technological advancements and standards, the 6G Position Statement serves as a cornerstone in shaping the trajectory of the mobile industry’s development.

 

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

ITU-R Framework for IMT-2030- Review and Future Direction

ITU-R Framework for IMT-2030: Review and Future Direction

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Dusseldorf, Germany, 15 February 2024. Today, the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) issued the “ITU-R Framework for IMT-2030: Review and Future Direction”. In this essential publication NGMN welcomes the recent report by ITU-R on the ‘Framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT for 2030 and beyond.’ This ITU-R report sets an important framework for future technology discussions towards 6G.

“Our publication underlines the importance of investment confidence for operators in order to deliver tangible value to customers while ensuring the commercial sustainability of current and future networks,” said Luke Ibbetson, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Head of Group R&D at Vodafone. “The capabilities identified for IMT-2030 should be able to be deployed as and when required, without compromising existing core connectivity services, and reflect a customer need that generates new value.”

There is close alignment between NGMN’s vision for 6G and the IMT-2030 framework. This close alignment covers vision, usage scenarios and essential capabilities, particularly related to practical and sustainable deployment and emphasizing harmonised global standards for mobile networks. NGMN goes on to provide recommendations and guidance on ITU-R aspects as it moves forward in the next stage of the IMT-2030 process, including:

  • New features should be able to be deployed as and when required, without compromising existing core connectivity services, which reflect customer needs and generate new values.
  • Evaluation should include interworking of IMT-2030 candidates with non-IMT systems.
  • Reinforcement of the importance of global standards for mobile networks within industry consensus-based standards organisations (e.g., 3GPP).
  • Consideration that advanced features introduced with the IMT-2020 network and/or a new radio interface might be candidates for IMT-2030.
  • Any new radio interface must demonstrate significant benefits over and above IMT-2020 in key metrics such as spectral and/or energy efficiency, overall energy consumption reduction and/or cost advantages.
  • Further work would be beneficial, as input to the process and next steps, to understand the commercial imperative for any extreme requirements of IMT-2030.
  • IMT-2030 should continue to evolve based on IP communications, considering cloud native solutions, disaggregation, and service-based architecture, ensuring both forward and backward compatibility. Support for self-organisation to manage complexity and emerging capabilities.

“This publication provides a realistic evaluation of IMT-2030 technologies”, said Michael Irizarry, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Engineering and Information Technology, UScellular. “For a new IMT-2030 radio technology to become widely adopted for 6G, it must demonstrate significant benefits across key metrics such as energy efficiency, traffic capacity and cost reduction”.

“We at NGMN look forward to collaborative efforts with the ITU-R and subsequent phases of activity to shape the future of IMT-2030,” said Madam Yuhong Huang, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board and General Manager China Mobile Research Institute. She added, “We hope the industry will prioritize the development needs outlined by NGMN on behalf of its operator members and actively participate in 6G research, contributing novel technologies, unlocking innovative business opportunities, and enabling the sustainable development of the society for the benefit of our customers.” 

Following the NGMN publications “6G Position Statement, an Operator View”, “6G Use Cases and Analysis”, “6G Drivers and Vision” and “6G Requirements and Design Considerations”, this latest publication “Analysis of ITU-R Framework for IMT-2030” marks the next step towards guidance for E2E requirements for 6G.

The publication can be downloaded from here.

Collaboration is key to driving the industry’s most important subjects such as NGMN’s Strategic Focus Topics: Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks and 6G. NGMN therefore invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

 

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

Reducing Environmental Impact

Reducing Environmental Impact: New Report for MNOs

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Dusseldorf, Germany, 23 January 2024. Today the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) issued a new publication “Reducing Environmental Impact: Best Practices and Recommendations” providing guidance to the mobile telecommunication industry on how to manage and reduce its environmental footprint in relation to greenhouse gas emissions, materials usage, energy and water.

“Over the last three decades the mobile industry has provided enormous economic and societal benefits to billions of users worldwide. We must however continue this success story in a way that is sustainable and that minimises the industry’s environmental footprint”, said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “I am proud that the mobile industry has come together – in NGMN – to share best practice and enable the whole industry to address this vitally important issue“, he added.

Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board, Group CTO and SVP Orange Innovation Networks at Orange added: “Environmental impact is not just limited to carbon emissions – use of rare materials, plastics and water footprint all need to be considered, managed and reduced. Orange is proud to have collaborated with our industry peers to develop this NGMN publication – a publication which will provide significant value to the wider industry”.

This latest NGMN publication highlights how operators can assess the lifecycle environmental impact of their network infrastructure in terms of emissions, energy, and water footprint. The report identifies the use of Lifecycle Assessment in relation to energy and emissions and demonstrates how to calculate water footprint. Based on these tools, strategies are outlined for how to manage and reduce the environmental impact by, for example, selecting and using materials in the design of network infrastructure that have lower emissions and energy requirements and by for example switching to data centre cooling methods that use less water.

“The vision of the NGMN Alliance is to provide impactful guidance to achieve innovative and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation, Green Future Networks, as well as 6G”, said Anita Doehler, CEO at NGMN Alliance. “The mobile industry is working very hard to reduce its environmental footprint. However, no single stakeholder – operator or vendor – can do this alone. We must work together, collaborate for the sake of developing new solutions, share best practices, and learn from each other to make this happen. This new publication is an excellent example of the value NGMN provides to its membership and to the wider industry”, she added.

The publication was developed with input from across the industry – with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes.

The publication can be downloaded from here.

Collaboration is key to driving the industry’s most important topics such as NGMN’s strategic pillars: Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks, and 6G. NGMN therefore invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

Further information and all publications of the NGMN Alliance can be found on their website at ngmn.org

 

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.

 

Network Energy Efficiency Phase 3A

NGMN issues Energy Saving Strategies and Best Practices for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs)

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Frankfurt, Germany, 05 December 2023. Today the NGMN Alliance (NGMN) issued the next publication concerning energy efficiency: “Effective Energy Saving Strategies and Best Practices for MNOs” providing the industry with further guidance on technical strategies to mitigate high energy costs.

“For the last 18 months high energy costs have put a renewed focus on technical strategies to reduce and better manage energy consumption as well as to ensure network resilience and stability”, said Arash Ashouriha, Chairman of the NGMN Alliance Board and SVP Group Technology at Deutsche Telekom. “This publication – which builds on our recent network energy efficiency roadmap (Green Future Networks: Network Energy Efficiency Phase 2) – provides MNOs with best practice energy saving and energy management techniques”, he stated.

Laurent Leboucher, Member of the NGMN Alliance Board, Group CTO and SVP Orange Innovation Networks at Orange, said “Saving energy is a must for all MNOs. Orange is proud to work in NGMN on this important topic which has immediate and ongoing relevance for the industry. We look forward to a forthcoming further publication on this topic due in Q1-2024 which will provide longer term guidance including on how Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing is a significant and cost-effective way of saving energy”.

“Sharing energy saving strategies and industry recommendations best illustrates NGMN’s efforts in adding immediate value to the industry whilst at the same time shaping the industry’s future direction through our core programmes”, emphasised Anita Döhler, CEO at NGMN Alliance.

This latest NGMN publication was developed with input from across the industry – with NGMN Partners representing operators, vendors, and research institutes. It provides a short guide to the best practices for operators to reduce and better manage their energy consumption whilst simultaneously maintaining desirable network Quality of Service (QoS) and handling a continuous increase of data traffic volume.  The report makes the following best practice recommendations:

  • Accelerate the transition from legacy networks (e.g., 2G and 3G) to more energy efficient technologies (e.g., 4G and 5G) whenever possible.
  • Deploy additional 5G/4G spectrum refarmed from 3G to increase network data throughput and capacity, and to keep up with the high data growth experienced during the past years.
  • Leverage the capabilities of the latest RAN technologies to achieve higher energy efficiency.
  • Implement Intelligent RAN energy saving features to save more energy in both 4G and 5G layers.
  • Update RAN sites with state-of-the-art energy efficient RAN equipment and antennas which facilitate all mobile generations, 2G to 5G.
  • Replace onsite air-conditioning units with energy efficient cooling.
  • Deploy renewable energy sources and battery storage units, which reduce the network dependency by electrical grids.
  • Use intelligent energy saving features together with battery storage equipment to further increase the network stability.

In addition, the report notes that the industry needs to work further to address several key areas including reducing base station ‘wake up times’ for extreme deep dormancy features and encouraging planning authorities to streamline and accelerate the approvals processes in relation to deploying renewable energy solutions at or near cell sites.

The publication can be downloaded here.

Collaboration is key to driving the industry’s most important challenges such as NGMN’s strategic pillars: Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks, and 6G. NGMN therefore invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in this important endeavour.

 

About NGMN Alliance

The NGMN Alliance (NGMN) is a forum founded by world-leading Mobile Network Operators and open to all Partners in the mobile industry. Its goal is to ensure that next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and ultimately will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The vision of NGMN is to provide impactful industry guidance to achieve innovative, sustainable and affordable mobile telecommunication services for the end user with a particular focus on Mastering the Route to Disaggregation / Operating Disaggregated Networks, Green Future Networks and 6G, whilst continuing to support 5G’s full implementation.

NGMN seeks to incorporate the views of all interested stakeholders in the telecommunications industry and is open to three categories of participants/NGMN Partners: Mobile Network Operators (Members), vendors, software companies and other industry players (Contributors), as well as research institutes (Advisors). NGMN invites all parties across the entire value chain to join the Alliance in these important endeavours.