Gartner defines the market of AI in communications service provider (CSP) network operations as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products with offerings in the form of capabilities embedded in CSP-specific operational technology (OT) applications or industry-agnostic horizontal applications. These products enable AI/ML-based network operations in CSPs. AI in CSP network operations helps CSPs to increase their network efficiency and performance, while reducing costs. CSPs are also evaluating use of AI in network operations to manage their energy consumption.
CSP service and network assurance solutions are OSS products/offerings for use in physical, virtual, containerized and hybrid network environments that enable CSPs to assure services and networks for customers in various market segments, such as consumer, enterprise and wholesale. Offerings include service and network monitoring solutions, fault management, performance management, service quality management, incident management, and workforce management. These solutions incorporate emerging practices in assurance, such as the move toward dynamic, real-time, data-driven assurance; closed-loop; intelligent automation; AIOps; and predictive analytics. This definition does not include solutions used to assure the underlying IT infrastructure used to host network functions.
An operational support system (OSS) is a set of programs that help a company in monitoring, controlling, analyzing and managing a computer network. OSS software is specifically dedicated to communications service providers and mainly used for supporting network planning, network provisioning, service fulfillment, and service assurance from a common core of service and resource management. Other functionality includes embedded analytics, correlation and aggregation, reporting, product life cycle management, multichannel support, resource and asset planning. OSS data is of strategic importance to measure the impact of operational technical processes on customer and business goals.
A self-organizing network (SON) is a framework that automates some planning functions as well as maintenance functions for mobile networks. Its main goals are to enable self-configuration, self-optimization and self-healing of radio network elements. It also minimizes interference between adjacent cells and between macro and small cells. SON is an automation technology for the operations and maintenance (O&M) of LTE networks, defined in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8 and onwards (as such, W-Fi support is not natively included in 3GPP's definition of SON).