China Mobile Zhejiang Accelerates O&M Digital Transformation to Strengthen its 5G Foundation

-- As a leader in 5G development, China Mobile Zhejiang is facing challenges such as network capabilities, user experience, and network energy saving while 5G has become a new economic engine. This article will share how China Mobile Zhejiang builds a leading green and intelligent 5G high-quality network based on agile and efficient network collaboration, ultimate user experience, and accurate O&M and energy saving. In addition, how to comprehensively promote the development of enterprise operation, O&M, quality, and energy efficiency through the intelligent transformation of operation data.

China Mobile Zhejiang, a leader in 5G development, has made some remarkable progress over the past three years in terms of 5G construction speed, coverage, and depth of industry engagement. This has helped establish Zhejiang as a national pilot area for 5G network rollout, as well as a demonstration area for innovative 5G applications.

China Mobile Zhejiang now provides 5G coverage to every one of the province's 20,226 administrative villages, and has more than 25 million 5G users across the whole of Zhejiang province. As a result of our efforts to facilitate an intelligent Asian Games, our 5G+ Intelligent Asian Games solutions won best solution awards in six out of ten categories and first prize for 5G applications at the World Internet Conference (WIC) Summit in Wuzhen. In terms of smart manufacturing, we have had deep involvement in the construction of 24 provincial future factories, enabled over 170 5G demonstration factories, and made key contributions to over 100 major industrial Internet projects across the province, including DMEGC, Unisyue, and IKD.

"None of this was achieved overnight," said Zhu Huaxin, Deputy General Manager of China Mobile Zhejiang. "While aiming to integrate 5G with intelligent digital transformation, find solutions for high-quality digital economy development, and create an entirely new landscape, China Mobile Zhejiang has gained deep insights and developed effective practices in digital and intelligent O&M."

Boosting the economy with 5G: Four challenges

Zhejiang is situated in eastern China, a region that has been experiencing rapid economic growth. The growth of the digital economy and China's New Infrastructure initiative have placed high requirements on telecom operators' services, and posed four key challenges to China Mobile Zhejiang:

Challenge 1: Better network infrastructure. Overall 5G coverage was falling short, resulting in the unavailability of 5G in high-traffic areas, frequent fallbacks to 4G due to inadequate 5G coverage, and a high number of complaints about 5G. In addition, there was poor coordination between 4G and 5G in some high-traffic areas. 5G high-traffic areas were smaller than those of 4G, and user-perceived rates of 5G in high-traffic cells were low, while 4G high-traffic areas still had a lot of scope for migration.

Challenge 2: Better user experience. As 5G adoption increased among users, it was important to ensure premium user experience. However, the commercial adoption of 5G's voice over NR (VoNR) service was still in its infancy, and its user experience was expected to be worse than that of 4G's voice over LTE (VoLTE) in 5% to 10% of the areas covered. In addition, user experience was expected to deteriorate in some scenarios. Therefore, efforts were needed to ensure the delivery of a consistent, high-quality VoNR experience.

Challenge 3: Faster digital transformation. Traditional network production processes were manual, and could not easily adapt to autonomous operations in terms of services, capabilities, or processes, nor could they meet new requirements for self-configuration, self-healing, or self-optimization. In addition, network elements (NEs) lacked capabilities regarding automatic configuration, performance awareness, and version compatibility, all of which are necessary for the implementation of autonomous networks.

Challenge 4: More refined network energy saving. 5G was forecast to account for 55% of all network traffic by the end of 2022, making it a key element of data transport. With services continuing to migrate to 5G networks, a range of energy saving challenges were emerging, such as reduced power saving rates, increased user experience risks, and increased solution complexity. It was essential that energy saving results were improved through more refined wireless energy-efficiency solutions and higher levels of intelligence.

The operator's actions to achieve high-quality development

As a major player in efforts to build a "Digital Zhejiang" and as a leader in intelligent digital transformation, China Mobile Zhejiang actively addressed these challenges. Our aim was to pioneer intelligent digital transformation and achieve high-quality development in terms of operation, maintenance, quality, and energy efficiency. This would accelerate our transformation toward digital and intelligent O&M, and give us a competitive edge in high-quality 5G development.

User Operations: Moving to user operations, with network and services synergy to increase 5G traffic

5G adoption faces a range of challenges, such as relatively idle 5G networks, insufficient network-service synergy, and a high proportion of users disabling 5G on their phones. China Mobile Zhejiang has successfully upgraded network operations to user operations and increased the proportion of 5G within all traffic by realizing synergy between networks and industries. We achieved this through several steps. First, we developed an eight-quadrant evaluation system for user profiling in three dimensions: 4G traffic, 5G traffic, and camping ratio. We then performed special optimization, focusing on quadrants like "high 4G traffic, high 5G traffic, low camping ratio", and "high 4G traffic, low 5G traffic, and high camping ratio". Second, we improved 5G camping through multi-dimensional joint commissioning and optimization, and low-energy efficiency rectification. We also made use of automatic beam adjustment at scale, based on Auto Cell Planning (an innovative radio network planning optimization solution), and adopted a site-specific parameter optimization policy for delivering optimal 5G coverage. Third, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of low-efficiency antennas and indoor distributed sites, compiled the identified issues, surveyed them, and then improved coverage through joint commissioning based on construction, reconstruction, and optimization. Finally, we conducted precision marketing based on operation analysis, SEQ (service, experience, quality) big data, and user behavior data to encourage customers to enable 5G functionality. In addition, precision marketing and intelligent recommendations improved 5G dataflow of usage (DoU). Thanks to these efforts, 5G now accounts for 41% of all traffic on China Mobile Zhejiang's networks, the highest proportion anywhere in China. Additionally, our 5G camping rate of 96.8% is ranked second in China. Our autonomous network score ranks first within the China Mobile Group, and our accuracy of identifying potential customers has improved by 2x.

Quality Improvement: Delivering high-quality applications, voice services, and scenario-based solutions

In an era where user experience is key, operator competitiveness depends greatly on network quality. China Mobile Zhejiang has made great efforts to improve user satisfaction and develop high-quality voice services, scenario-based solutions, and related applications.

First, to address the industry's lack of effective methods for predicting user experience, we have targeted improving network Net Promoter Score (NPS). We use big data and AI algorithms to identify and resolve issues that might lead users to complain about network performance. This development has helped us reduce the number of user’s complaining by 48% and the number of complaints by 20% in 2022.

Second, to address challenges in the initial stages of VoNR deployment, we have implemented scheduling algorithm optimization, route optimization, and multi-network coordination to enhance VoNR robustness and create high-quality voice networks. To date, our VoNR call completion rate has reached 99.62%, while our call drop rate is just 0.05%, lifting overall voice experience to a new level.

Third, we have moved to address the complex challenges related to improving experience in densely populated areas, such as those containing universities and residential buildings We have also looked to meet the high-capacity requirements of high-speed railway scenarios and those encountered when coordinating public and private networks. To do this, we have made use of technologies like indoor-outdoor coordination and the self-coordination of public-private networks. This has increased daily traffic in universities and residential areas by 15% and 8% respectively. The user-perceived rates of 5G on high-speed railways has increased by 26%, where 5G accounts for 52% of all traffic.

Fourth, to support applications that are developed with different technologies and have different network requirements, we provide differentiated assurance services for customers as a key method for improving user experience and maximizing network value. We use DPI to accurately identify popular applications and deliver differentiated solutions and assurance policies. This has reduced service delays by 32.5%, achieved a 99.5% one-time success rate, and greatly improved user satisfaction. Thanks to outstanding network quality, we now lead the country in 5G network satisfaction, and were ranked No. 1 in the recent country-wide test by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). We have also been named an "Operator with Excellent Network Quality in Key Sites".

Intelligent O&M: Accelerating intelligent digital transformation based on platforms and new operating models

Given the coexistence of multiple generations of networks, traditional network O&M faced three key challenges: a high proportion (60%) of manually modified parameters during O&M, a high proportion (53%) of manual reviews during O&M, and the need to manually store 21 types of massive data sets. To address this, we have developed a wireless OSS support platform based on an automation engine which enables computer-assisted manual operations to be transformed into expert-assisted automated operations. By taking advantage of innovations like the wireless autonomous cockpit and automation engine, we have been able to restructure our services, reshape our capabilities, and reengineer our processes. We have made excellent progress in terms of intelligent O&M practices, reducing the time taken for major fault recovery by 70%, improving the efficiency of intelligent equipment O&M by 11x, and resolving 80% of wireless problems automatically. Together with Huawei Core Networks, our autonomous network innovation practice won the GLOTEL Award "Automation Initiative of the Year" which is issued by Informa.

Improving Energy Efficiency: Creating a smart energy brain to balance network quality and energy saving

China Mobile Zhejiang was the first operator in China to establish an energy saving team dedicated to the research and development of a smart energy "brain". This aimed to contribute to China's carbon neutrality goals, while responding to calls for energy conservation and tariff reduction. Our team used big data and AI to develop a "central nervous system" and digital intelligent "cockpit" to optimize network energy operations. This expanded energy-saving from just the night-time period to the entire day, and from single-equipment areas to mixed-equipment areas. This created a new wireless energy-saving operating model that covers the whole day, all areas, and all frequency bands.

As a result, China Mobile Zhejiang's smart energy brain can use AI to forecast scenario-based service demands using maintenance, repair, and operation (MRO) data, and prioritize and implement different policies for each scenario. The smart energy brain can now automatically implement 25,000 energy-saving schemes a day, reducing power consumption per GB of 5G traffic by 9.5%, and average power consumption of 5G base stations by over 10%. As a result, our smart energy brain was awarded group awards for "Top 10 AI Benchmarks for O&M" and "Technological Innovation".

Conclusion

China Mobile Zhejiang's efforts in the digital and intelligent transformation of 5G O&M, while adhering to China Mobile Group strategy, have significantly improved our service operations, O&M efficiency, and customer experience. In the future, as more industries go digital and intelligent, we will continue to promote agile and efficient network-industry synergy. Through superior customer experience, and accurate and intelligent O&M energy saving, our aim is to deliver leading, green, intelligent, and high-quality 5G networks that support a prosperous digital economy.

The strongest wisdom is the wisdom of all, and the greatest force is the joint force. Looking to the future, we at China Mobile Zhejiang will continue to collaborate with partners like Huawei to expand the industry ecosystem and dive deeper into intelligent O&M. We aim to inject momentum into a Digital Zhejiang, contribute to digital transformation worldwide, and ensure more people can benefit from digitalization.