Innovator Profile: SKT Tango

Daniel Chae
Senior Manager, Network OSS Development Team, SK Telecom

Hyongoo Kang
Senior Manager, Network OSS Development Team, SK Telecom

Minsoo Na
Senior Manager, Global Tech Alliance Team, SK Telecom

Unharnessing the potential of AI for complex network management in the 5G era

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5G is already a reality in Korea, where 5G was commercially launched in April 2019. While 5G is expected to generate new business opportunities and revenue streams, the network management becomes more complex as there can be up to 4 different generations of mobile communications coexisting within an operator.

Furthermore, the requirements of 5G use cases also imply network densification. Not only does this aggravate the cost associated with the RAN (Radio Access Network) it brings new challenges to the operators to deploy and operate the RAN and to optimise the customer experience.

It is for this reason why SKT developed TANGO (Telco Advanced Next-Generation OSS), an AI-assisted network operating system that provides total integrated OSS (Operation Support System) for operators. SKT’s continued efforts to streamline and simplify its networks, virtualisation of the networks in 2015, SKT have relentlessly pursued its quest for optimising its network towards more flexible and lean architecture.

TANGO Solution

The TANGO, as the total unified OSS platform, consists of six modules: Operation, Inventory, Engineering & Construction, Analytics, Data Warehouse and Platforms for unified OSS. The main strength of TANGO is that it provided powerful data analytics and optimised automation based on AI capabilities in real-time. AI analytics, reinforced by its virtuous cycle and characterised by superior analytics capabilities, opens up myriads of use cases that TANGO can offer.

For example, TANGO detects any abnormal situation automatically by analysing customer’s experience and recommends actions to resolve it, and automatic recovery with a zero-touch operation. Also, it supports 3D modelling that significantly reduces the difficulties associated with planning 5G radio (for both below and above 6GHz band). The tool enables mobile operator to model the coverage in both outdoor and indoor settings in 3D

Further to maximise customers’ satisfaction and utilise telco eco-system, TANGO can expose its capability to 3rd party via Open API. The B2B customers of network slice can access the OSS to monitor quality and utilisation and to gain insights from the data intelligence

Therefore, operation efficiency will be achieved with TANGO and one can also expect the monetisation of use cases by leveraging the platform from B2C to B2B services in an agile way. AI-based network analytics, network as a service (NaaS), and OSS as a service (OaaS) will be useful assets for the discovery of new use cases to be monetised.

 

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