Telecommunications and networking provider Ericsson recently launched its generative AI-based virtual assistant that uses large language model (LLM) technology to read, understand, and generate new content to provide personalized answers for network operators configuring wireless 5G networks, troubleshooting problems, and creating policies.
Ericsson’s AI-based NetCloud Assistant, or ANA, is LLM-based and provides concise responses and summaries to queries using information gathered from multiple sources. ANA offers productivity enhancements as it gathers information across technical documents and insights from the network environment to provide contextualized, specific responses. This reduces the need for network administrators to manually gather and correlate the same information to find a resolution, Ericsson says.
“Ericsson’s NetCloud is differentiated in its ability to simplify the deployment, management, and troubleshooting of enterprise cellular networking. By investing heavily in cutting-edge AI technology, we are empowering even the most streamlined IT teams to tackle 5G administration challenges, enhancing network reliability, security, and user experience with unparalleled efficiency,” said Pankaj Malhotra, Head of Enterprise Networking and Security, Enterprise Wireless Solutions, Ericsson, in a statement.
ANA provides wireless network administrators with additional security by hosting all AI components within Ericsson’s environment and avoiding API calls to third-party consumer genAI applications. Designed for enterprise Wireless WAN (WWAN) networks, ANA offers several features to reduce manual efforts and speed up the time it takes to complete common tasks.
According to Ericsson, ANA provides:
- Knowledge summarization: Correlates data from Ericsson’s library of technical documentation into concise summaries personalized to the customer’s network.
- Configuration assistance: Accelerates Day 1 deployments with step-by-step guidance for WAN edge device configuration based on best practices.
- Enhanced troubleshooting: Automates common diagnostic tasks and provides instructions to troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues, speeding mean time to repair.
- Policy recommendations: Translate business requirements into recommended SD-WAN and WAN bonding policies to enhance WAN performance and application availability. Ericsson says this capability will be available in future releases of ANA.
- Custom Graph Generation: Another future capability, this feature will let administrators ask ANA to create detailed graphs to visualize more complex information not typically available in standard NetCloud dashboards or pre-canned reports.
ANA also works with NetCloud’s AIOps dashboard, which works to detect performance-driven anomalies such as latency and jitter. Coupling ANA with AIOps will help wireless network operations to proactively address issues by querying ANA, Ericsson says.
“ANA helps troubleshoot common connectivity and reachability issues with our WAN edge devices and our SD-WAN and security gateway. Rather than the administrator having to perform port scans, run speed tests, and wade through documentation, ANA will isolate the issue for the administrator helping to improve mean time to repair,” wrote Archana Khetan, who heads product management for WAN and Security Business at Ericsson Enterprise Wireless, in a blog post.
General availability for the new agent will be announced sometime during the first half of 2025 as the features will continue to evolve to support Ericsson Private 5G solutions.
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