AT&T community CTO Yigal Elbaz on AI, Open RAN and the way MWC traits from previous years are taking part in out
RCR Wi-fi Information caught up with Yigal Elbaz, AT&T’s SVP of know-how and community companies and community CTO for AT&T Providers, at Cell World Congress in Barcelona, to get the newest on what’s taking place with the provider’s community.
We requested about AT&T’s progress on its Open RAN transition, how the provider is using synthetic intelligence and constructing a community digital twin, and Elbaz’s impressions of this 12 months’s MWC Barcelona. Right here’s what the dialog lined.
On Open RAN: “All the pieces goes in accordance with plan,” Elbaz stated. Per beforehand public timelines, AT&T expects to have “largely accomplished the modernization” of its 5G community by 2027, and to have 70% of its 5G community visitors traversing open {hardware} by late 2026.
Elbaz outlined the 4 components of AT&T’s Open RAN transition technique. First, the “construct and swap” work taking place on the community aspect, the place Nokia radios are being swapped out and on the similar time, further midband spectrum is being deployed. Elbaz stated that this includes “hundreds of websites, [but] minimal impression to clients” and that a lot of the new {hardware} being deployed is “open succesful.”
“We’re deploying our midband spectrum whereas we’re doing this, cleansing up the configuration of the websites and constructing 3D imagery of our cell websites—making a digital twin that’s then fed into our AI-based community planning platform,” he added.
The second piece of the transition is cloud RAN. AT&T has had industrial visitors flowing over cloud RAN for greater than a 12 months, utilizing Ericsson’s options, and made its first V-RAN name in early 2024. It considers the transfer to cloud RAN a basis of its Open RAN transition, and Elbaz stated the C-RAN deployments are persevering with.
The third piece is third-party radios, together with radios from Fujitsu and Mavenir in addition to Ericsson. The fourth side is the administration system. “Usually in our business, each vendor comes with its personal administration system. We’re altering that. We’re utilizing one administration system,” he stated. “The entire distributors going to combine the identical one.” That use of 1 administration system additionally presents one other manner to enhance effectivity and introduce extra AI and machine-learning.
On synthetic intelligence: Elbaz emphasised that AI isn’t new to AT&T, and that the corporate has been “leveraging AI for years in varied components of the community,” together with by constructing quite a few AI instruments that it has constructed itself.
One of many methods AT&T makes use of AI is in community planning, he defined. “If you consider the complexity of how we’re constructing our wi-fi community and fiber planning and the quantity of attributes that come into this, AI is a superb software to do this.” Launching of latest websites closely depends on automation and AI, he added, and as well as, AT&T has “constructed our personal AI-based vitality financial savings [tools] that I’d argue can compete with something on the market,” which he says has enabled 30% vitality financial savings.
The transfer towards open networks ties in to AT&T’s use of AI. “With a purpose to actually reap the benefits of genAI, you actually need to have information flowing by way of your system,” Elbaz stated, including that as AT&T strikes towards open networks, it has extra information flowing in methods that may have be leveraged by AI—together with by way of the service administration and orchestration (SMO) and thru rApps—at more and more granular time intervals.
“The SMO … and the utilization of rApps is a superb instance of how we are able to now introduce extra capabilities of AI and even issues that we construct ourselves right this moment,” he stated, including: “There’s a whole lot of benefits that include openness, with information publicity to the system that we are able to gather extra simply after which we are able to apply totally different fashions.” AT&T can be engaged on constructing its personal community basis mannequin, he stated.
On community automation: Community automation, and the aim of autonomous networks, was one of many main themes at this 12 months’s MWC Barcelona. Elbaz stated that he thinks of community autonomy utilizing TM Discussion board’s community autonomy framework, which is what AT&T judges its progress in opposition to.
“We are attempting to benchmark ourself consistently in opposition to that mannequin to see the place we stand,” he stated—however, he went on, it will get sophisticated and depends upon what a part of the community you’re contemplating. Legacy infrastructure represents a barrier to automation, however however, work that AT&T has performed up to now a number of years has enabled larger ranges of autonomy in some components of the community, he stated. Others will take extra time. And AI is integral to automation as effectively.
“We’re profiting from all the AI information that we now have,” Elbaz stated. “And don’t neglect that right this moment, telco might be one of many main enterprises with regards to use of AI. And … we’ve been one of many first movers. We took benefit of our relationship with Microsoft and Azure and we’re in a short time created our personal closed backyard in Azure for our information.
“Our CDO staff is consistently introducing new fashions into the backend. … Behind the scenes, there’s a whole lot of intelligence [and] totally different fashions, all primarily based on APIs that makes it simple,” he stated. “By way of these APIs, we are able to construct our personal capabilities that we are able to apply for wi-fi planning, for wi-fi intelligence and totally different components of the community. … The corporate’s doing extraordinarily effectively in that regard.”
On constructing a community digital twin: AT&T already has a whole lot of details about its networks, Elbaz stated, however its aggressive work on modernization and open networks is permitting the corporate to do web site clean-up and “considerably simplifying” websites. In lots of circumstances, he stated, AT&T is flying drones round websites to do 3D imagery that’s then being fed into digital fashions.
“You create the imagery, you create the information that comes from these techniques and that begins that can assist you to construct a digital twin that’s fed into our community planning platform that we’ve been utilizing for years,” Elbaz stated. That in-house constructed platform, then, is utilized by AT&T to assist determine the place so as to add capability, construct a brand new web site, which spectrum to deploy at a selected location, and so forth.
On MWC Barcelona 2025: Two years in the past, he recalled, MWC Barcelona was all about APIs; final 12 months, the emphasis was synthetic intelligence.
With reference to using APIs, Elbaz referenced the information from the present that the three nationwide U.S. carriers are all going to be assist Aduna, an API three way partnership launched in September by Ericsson, Google Cloud and quite a few world operators, in addition to the Open Gateway venture as indicators of progress on APIs up to now 24 months since they made a splash at MWC.
“I believe this business is innovating in a spot that we haven’t seen earlier than,” he stated. “I do suppose that our capability to monetize our community in additional methods than our normal of telecom mannequin is an thrilling alternative for all of us. And there’s energy in that unity, as a result of nobody desires to construct an app or write an app for one telco or one area. Everybody desires scale. … Now we have to work the demand.” However having the ability to combination APIs and supply scale throughout a number of carriers, areas and units implies that the API ecosystem is maturing, which can imply it turns into extra engaging to builders.
In relation to AI at MWC, he mirrored, “I believe there’s a whole lot of AI nonetheless, however all the messages are tempered. I believe it’s a whole lot of enterprise as typical, [with] some degree of maturity, which I believe is definitely good. We don’t simply use buzz to get excited. Everyone knows that there’s focus taking place. … I believe what you’re seeing is that the business is saying, okay, there’s an uber-cycle right here throughout all industries, which is named genAI. And everybody understands that that may require an enormous quantity of information actions, and that information facilities are getting extra distributed. That may be a traditional space for us community individuals to be a part of.
“I believe a whole lot of the businesses are asking us, okay, what’s our position and the way will we take part on this worth creation? … How do we actually monetize? How will we come collectively after which how do we actually take part on this entire AI economic system? I believe it’s fascinating,” he stated. “And I believe what you’re seeing is totally different solutions from totally different operators and that may go all [ways]. So it’s attention-grabbing to look at.”