In 2020, Danish service provider, TDC NET, observed a 25-year network performance high across their nationwide 4G and 5G networks. Contributing to this success was the partnership with Ericsson to transform its network operations using Ericsson’s AI-powered and data-driven Operations Engine.
In 2020, Denmark became one of the first countries in Europe to introduce Covid-19 lockdown measures, raising customer demands for network performance and stability. For Denmark’s largest digital infrastructure and network provider, TDC NET, this coincided with a period of major network overhaul, which included the upgrade of more than 3,800 base stations to deliver nationwide 5G and faster 4G speeds.
At the same time, TDC NET was also pursuing an extensive transformation of its network operations, supported by a collaboration with Ericsson Managed Services, which saw the network infrastructure provider implement a fully data-driven approach through AI and automation and thus became the first service provider in Europe to roll out Ericsson’s cognitive technology suite for optimization. Today, this managed services collaboration forms the basis of many ongoing initiatives which are enabling TDC NET to adopt a more data-driven customer-centric operational approach, and continuously adapt to drastically changing network usage and traffic patterns.
Today, TDC NET can report that its network is the most stable in 25 years, with fewer instances of unplanned downtime and customer disruptions, and a more stable overall user experience on the entire converged network. These performance milestones are the fruits of TDC NET’s commitment to a wider digitalization agenda, enabled by various inter- and cross-organizational teams working seamlessly together to deliver that transformation.
“2020 was a year of many challenges, but also milestones, for TDC NET and Denmark’s digital future”, says Alexander Jenbar, Chief Operations Officer, TDC Net. “Being first in the Nordics with a nationwide roll out 5G services meant making many interventions into what is a very large, convergent network in a short space of time. At the same time, our industry had to deal with a changing world where customer expectations were evolving rapidly, even before the pandemic hit. And even with the challenge of bringing new functionalities into the network, our customers still expect perfect performance and for this we need to have the right people, processes, tools and partner for our mobile network – which is what we have today in Ericsson.”
Peter Laurin, SVP and Head of Business Area Managed Services, Ericsson, says: “We are excited to see that our AI and data-driven approach to managed services, the Ericsson Operations Engine, is contributing to a 25-year network performance high for TDC NET. This brings a further improved experience for TDC NET’s customers and reinforces our partnership and Ericsson’s leadership in managed services”.
In its nationwide network modernization, TDC NET took full advantage of Ericsson’s cognitive technologies across the network lifecycle by deploying them as part of their legacy network upgrade and launch of 5G services. Based on unique algorithms, developed in collaboration with Ericsson, this approach is helping TDC NET to transform from a largely manual and reactive processes to a proactive and data-driven automation one that allows them to intelligently managing the trade-off between speed, cost, and quality across their networks.
For example, intelligent site engineering leverages drones to create accurate digital twins of new sites, speeding up the work throughout deployment and acceptance of network sites. Another example is cognitive tuning, which provides scalable user experience insights based on geolocation of crowdsourced traffic data, making it possible to accelerate the roll-out while excelling on performance. And with cognitive optimization it is possible to continuously perform proactive performance diagnostics and resolution to sustain a best-in-class end-user experience.
“Digitalization starts with robots and evolves to predictive intelligence and automated dashboards,” says Alexander Jenbar. “We want to digitalize as much as we can but only in a manner where it fits into our organization, such as our processes and the effects we want to achieve. All of this will help us to get to a better stage and deliver on spot, on time and in a predictive way – rather than responding in a reactionary way when the customer has already seen the effects. It also makes it possible for us to utilize our human resources for much more important things.”
In March 2019, Ericsson and TDC signed a five-year managed services contract, centered on the AI and automation-driven Ericsson Operations Engine. The partnership encompasses network operations, field services, customer experience management, and network planning and optimization. TDC customers benefit from best-in-class proactive network performance powered by Ericsson’s global scale, processes, artificial intelligence and automation solutions.
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