The Broadband Forum has introduced two industry standards known as the Automated Intelligence Management (AIM) framework, aimed at leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and automation to enhance network services’ quality and reliability. AIM has the potential to save service providers both costs and effort associated with scaling their networks. By reducing on-site maintenance and human intervention, it can proactively identify and address network faults before they impact the user’s experience, ultimately improving operational efficiency.
The AIM framework is seen as a solution to unlock new revenue streams and optimize network infrastructure, particularly beneficial for service providers that have had to increase their capital expenditure (CapEx) to expand their networks.
Key points and benefits of the AIM framework:
- AIM utilizes AI, ML, and automation to enhance network operational efficiency and reduce operational expenditure (OpEx). It can anticipate and resolve network faults before they affect service quality, reducing the need for on-site maintenance.
- The framework offers potential cost savings and revenue generation for service providers.
- Two standards, TR-436 and TR-486, define the AIM framework and its interfaces, ensuring vendor interoperability. Use cases include home Wi-Fi network monitoring, network performance optimization, and automated traffic steering.
- AIM enables automated and intelligent network operations with minimal human intervention, improving user experience. It facilitates end-to-end root cause analysis, path degradation predictions, and customer experience assessments.
The Broadband Forum says its AIM framework represents a significant step forward in network management, providing service providers with the tools needed to deliver high-quality services efficiently and cost-effectively.
“Service assurance with performance monitoring and automated traffic steering is an attractive proposition as it enables an automated and intelligent way to operate the network with minimal human intervention,” said Mauro Tilocca of TIM – Telecom Italia who also serves as the Broadband Forum Service Provider Action Council Chair. “The new specifications deliver an entire framework to empower network capabilities, via AI/ML-based recommendations. The AIM pipeline components can be implemented as virtualized functions in a cloud-native environment, allowing a high degree of reusability per modern DevOps and GitOps paradigms, as well as flexible and seamless deployments.”