Vodafone UK and Ericsson Trial AI Tech to Improve 5G Energy Efficiency
Broadband and mobile operator Vodafone UK has today announced that they’ve successfully conducted trials with Ericsson of three new Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) powered software solutions. This showed that they were able to reduce the daily power consumption of their 5G radio units by 33%.
The trials, which took place at select London sites, harnessed Ericsson’s latest Service Continuity AI App suite with Intelligent Energy Efficiency, which claims to “dynamically manage the network’s energy needs without compromising on performance“, supporting operators to reduce both their operating expenditure (OPEX) and carbon emissions.
As part of the trial, Vodafone UK implemented three key use cases: 5G Deep Sleep, 4G Cell Sleep Mode orchestration, and a Radio Power Efficiency Heatmap. These features are designed to work in tandem to measure, predict and optimize energy consumption across the network, with the ability to power down components during low traffic periods and rapidly reactivate them when needed.
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➤ 5G Deep Sleep: AI-powered predictive algorithms enable radios to enter an ultra-low energy hibernation state, saving up to 70 percent energy consumption during low traffic hours.
➤ 4G Cell Sleep Mode Orchestration: Creates a behavioral model of network cells to optimize sleep parameters, automatically balancing energy savings and performance.
➤ Radio Power Efficiency Map: Creates a visual map of all network cells, using ML to identify and rank underperforming sites for targeted improvements.
Andrea Donà, Chief Network Officer & Network Director at Vodafone UK, said:
“By working with Ericsson to successfully apply these innovative software solutions to our network we’re able to significantly improve energy efficiency without impacting the service our customers receive. Reducing power consumption at our trial sites is a big win – both financially and environmentally and shows we can continue to improve the efficiency of our network as we build 5G coverage across the UK.”
We should point out that Vodafone aren’t the first UK mobile operator to play with these sorts of technologies, with EE deploying a similar set of solutions last year (example).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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LTE breathing has been a thing for a while, and network operators have been turning off frequencies or lowering the power for a while. The downside is that the end user typically ends up with slower speeds or in some cases loses 5G altogether. The networks will say they only do it because of lack of demand at certain times (e.g. “nobody is using our 5G at 3:30 AM) but some people will suffer so that the network can gain a few pennies back.
As a customer paying for 24-hour service, I expect to receive that level of network availability. However, it is not explicitly communicated during the sign-up process.