Telcos have been managing declining revenues, market saturation and the addition of new services in an attempt to offset these challenges. Every new iteration adds additional complications to their systems and has impacts on time-to-market, efficiency and future flexibility. Kal De, the senior vice president for Products & Engineering at Nokia’s Cloud & Network Services business, says it’s time for communications service providers (CSPs) to stop managing complexity and start simplifying it.
Agile Telco interviewed De to understand how Nokia’s new Autonomous Network Fabric supports its Sense, Think, Act framework for telcos. The Fabric, De explains, acts as a connective tissue to provide a common layer of intelligence and secure automation for next generation apps, unifying telco architectures rather than increasing fragmentation.
Agile Telco: There’s no shortage of conversation around autonomous networks right now. From keynotes to whitepapers, it seems like the entire telecoms industry is leaning into the concept. Are telcos genuinely making tangible progress, or are autonomous networks still mainly aspirational talk?
Kal De: That’s a fair enough question. It’s easy to get swept up in the buzzwords, but the momentum behind autonomous networks is real. According to recent TM Forum data, 81% of CSPs have concrete plans to run fully autonomous networks by 2030. That’s not notional, that’s strategic commitment. Tier-one operators are out in front, building on years of automation investment, but even regional and mid-size CSPs are actively moving up the automation maturity curve. Why? Because the business case is becoming a competitive necessity.
