O2 has just taken a step to make its 5G network more efficient and reliable, as well as improving the overall customer experience. To do this, it has partnered with P.I. Works, which has deployed its 5G Centralized SON and 5G Performance Management solutions into O2’s network.
The 5G Centralized SON (or self-organising network) essentially automates end-to-end network management, which improves customer experience while minimising network management costs.
Its 5G Performance Management meanwhile monitors network performance, transforms the data into actionable insights, and detects potential problems before they impact users.
Together, they should lead to a marked improvement in O2’s 5G network, and with the increased efficiency and reduced costs it’s possible that O2 could also be capable of expanding its 5G network faster – or of passing on some of those savings to customers, though that’s just speculation for now.
Brendan O’Reilly, Chief Technology Officer at Telefónica UK, said:
“Our customers are the first consideration in everything we do – and introducing self-organising technology into our 5G network is no different. Using customer insight is core to how we design, build and enhance our services, so introducing innovation that lets us optimise our 5G network based on customers’ real-time experience is a vital step forward in driving improvements.”
While this is new for O2’s 5G network, the company already uses P.I. Works’ Centralized SON for its 4G, 3G and 2G networks, so it’s clear that O2 sees the benefit, otherwise it wouldn’t have expanded the agreement to include 5G as well.
While this all sounds promising, O2 isn’t the only network partnering with other companies to improve its 5G experience. We recently reported on Three’s partnership with CityFibre for a full fibre backhaul for example, while BT has announced that it’s using Juniper’s cloud platform to manage its 5G network.
Right now then all of the UK’s major networks are putting a lot of work into strengthening their infrastructure and improving their 5G networks – this is just one example of that, but it’s one that O2 customers are sure to benefit from.