BARCELONA Reuters -- Microsoft unveiled previews of two AI-powered services designed to manage telecom networks, drawing on the same capabilities used to manage the tech giant's Azure cloud platform.
Operators can benefit from advanced artificial intelligence that helps to unlock new business opportunities from data on and insights into their operations - including the roll out of high-speed 5 G networks - the company said in a blog post.
Microsoft entered the 5 G arena after its acquisition of Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch in 2020.
The company has focused heavily on AI, investing heavily in OpenAI's ChatGPT bot, which has added to the attention that artificial intelligence has been getting in Silicon Valley and beyond. Microsoft said last month that it wanted to imbue AI into all its products, as OpenAI continues to pursue the creation of human-like intelligence for machines.
We are taking our native cloud work and making it specific to this telecom operator network space. Jason Zander, executive vice president of strategic missions and technologies at Microsoft, said, "I think that is a great example of AI ops work we are introducing into the system."
He said that we are bringing that same technology into this space. Every operator I've shown this to is extremely excited. Telecom partners, such as AT&T Inc Ericsson and Nokia Oyj, will be able to benefit from Microsoft's new Nexus service, an all-in-one platform that allows operators to manage their networks from the cloud, and two different AIOps services.
Monica Zethzon, vice president at Ericsson, said the developments would allow operators to transform their core networks while improving customer experience.