Can AI bring down network energy costs?

Data volumes in mobile networks are increasing at an unprecedented rate. In our latest mobility report, we forecast that mobile data traffic will grow fourfold by 2025, reaching up to 160 exabytes (EB) per month.

This is amazing of course and offers all kinds of opportunities for communications service providers, but there is also a potential downside to this rapid surge in data traffic: its impact on the energy consumption and carbon footprint of mobile networks.

That’s not the only downside for communications service providers, as it also raises a significant cost concern.

The energy consumption of today’s networks accounts for 10 percent of annual operation expenditure (OPEX). As we found in our AI report, the demand to reduce operational costs already ranks among the top priorities for today’s operators. With the deployment of 5G and a spike in data traffic forecast, suddenly this demand becomes even more relevant.

Therefore, the obvious question which many are asking is: what happens next?

AI-powered solutions can help service providers to break the energy curve while meeting rising data traffic demands

Here at Ericsson, we have worked hard for many years to be in a position where we can say that it is possible to break the energy curve. For many years, this has been one of the focuses of our portfolio development.

Today, communications service providers now have the opportunity to lower total energy consumption across their networks. However, what makes this truly remarkable is that, in doing so, service providers can still continue to meet the massive traffic growth that is expected in coming years.

How is this achievable, especially when we consider that mobile data traffic looks likely to quadruple by 2025? The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in mobile networks in recent years holds part of the answer.

In recent years, based on advanced data analytics, AI has gradually been making a breakthrough across telecom markets; a primary example being security management. Today, the focus of network intelligence is moving into another area, namely, to enable the reduction of energy consumption across the network. One area where it will make a big impact and where most savings can potentially be made is in the management of network operations.