“As the new Chief Technology Officer of Telecommunications at Red Hat, my priority is to deliver value to our customers with tangible business results, optimizing solutions that connect society and improve our quality of life. In the near future, service providers will strategically adopt emerging technologies, prioritizing operational efficiency, resilience, security, sustainability, and cost,” says Ian Hood, CTO, Telecommunications, Red Hat
Embracing AI Amid Chaos:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is well-positioned to benefit from the deployment flexibility offered by the distributed nature of service provider networks, as well as to help drive operational efficiencies. Open source is working to help create smaller AI models, which can help reduce costs and computing requirements while empowering an organization's existing applications and processes. And by leveraging these smaller AI models across the radio access network (RAN), the core, and other areas, service providers can address a growing number of business and operational challenges.
The opportunities in AI for service providers are greater than ever, but so is the complexity, especially as the number and size of AI applications increase. Red Hat is working to simplify this growing complexity with data engineering initiatives and trusted solutions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and Red Hat OpenShift AI, which enable faster data processing, real-time decision-making, and improved application performance.
Service providers can leverage AI to enable intelligent automation of lifecycle management. This will provide better insights from multiple network and IT domains, including every device and service, to improve business and resource efficiency. We are already seeing this unfold. Many service providers have moved beyond the initial AI testing phase, deploying a diverse set of cognitive assistants, customer service use cases, and business operations, as the business benefits can be easily quantified. Some service providers also offer these AI capabilities as a service to their enterprise customers. Other AI-enabled use cases are currently being tested across their network environment, particularly within the AI-RAN, to achieve sustainability goals and build an autonomous intelligent infrastructure.
While substantial benefits can be realized with AI, the return on investment (ROI) may not be immediate. This means that service providers should identify a realistic target for increasing productivity and operational efficiency through AI and deploy it across their enterprise accordingly. By leveraging AI with clear goals and strategy, service providers can bring their AI projects into production faster and achieve better results.
From Telecoms to Tech Companies
: In recent years, telecom companies have evolved into technology companies (Telco to Techco). This means that, in addition to providing connectivity, they now also offer digital services and solutions. This shift brings significant challenges, such as regulations, cybersecurity, and internal transformations. However, by adopting open-source technologies and methodologies (software that anyone can freely use, modify, and share), telcos can overcome these challenges and discover new growth opportunities, innovate their business models, and enhance their market presence. To accelerate this process, we share some suggestions and lessons learned from working with our clients:
● Focus on delivering business results through phased execution.
● Empower cross-functional teams to collaborate and execute successfully.
● Select partners and integrators who understand and align with business objectives.
● Supplement teams with qualified members and training from partners.
● Automate everything to offset operational complexity and gain agility.
● Establish clear success criteria and monitor project progress.
● Lead integration and ongoing governance initiatives.
● Start with small projects and make continuous adjustments as needed.
Virtualization is back (though it never really went away).
Virtualization has returned to the spotlight with a fresh perspective across the telecom industry. While service providers are using virtualization at scale worldwide, they are taking a closer look at their investments in certain areas of the business as a result of rising operating costs and a rapidly changing business landscape.
As service providers explore alternatives to their existing virtualized infrastructure, they are discovering that modernizing to a common cloud-native infrastructure delivers quantifiable business results. In addition, telcos are looking to transform their environments to integrate mission-critical applications with a growing number of AI models and tools.
Service providers are working with Red Hat to save costs and transform their businesses while extending the lifespan of their virtual machines (VMs). They gain operational benefits from a unified approach to managing legacy virtualized applications and modern cloud-native workloads.
Common cloud architectures mark a turning point for open RAN.
Open RAN deployments have progressed more slowly than traditional RAN, but they have now achieved the cost-effectiveness and performance necessary for widespread adoption. The ecosystem has matured, supported by common cloud platforms and operational tools that streamline automation and lifecycle management across many RAN sites.
Service providers that have deployed multi-vendor 5G core applications on a common cloud-native platform have applied this learning to open RAN, accelerating time to market. Open RAN is gaining momentum by enabling providers to differentiate themselves from the competition, improving security, operations, and service delivery at the edge.
Private networks are leading the adoption of open RAN, leveraging it to offer customizable and reliable enterprise solutions. Service providers are also using it with fixed wireless access (FWA) to expand broadband to underserved areas. At the same time, commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite offerings with non-terrestrial networks (NTN) are poised to extend mobile broadband to remote regions.
Leveraging observability to drive intelligent, autonomous infrastructure:
Observability is a data-driven approach to automating infrastructure across hardware, software, and cloud deployments. Accessing and analyzing this data at scale is becoming a key differentiator for service providers. Accessing and analyzing this data at scale, combining predictive analytics, generative AI, and open APIs, enables the generation of valuable insights and operational recommendations for building intelligent, autonomous infrastructure. One example of smart, autonomous infrastructure is AI in RAN, which can dynamically manage frequencies, sectors, and base stations, improving efficiency, power consumption, and performance metrics. Similarly, generative AI and AIOps are enabling predictive maintenance, accurate root cause analysis (RCA), and smarter decision-making, with privacy and compliance safeguards.
Laying the groundwork for 6G and beyond:
Service providers are taking a more cautious approach to the next generation of mobile architecture (6G), focusing on improving business outcomes. Defining 6G involves more than just infrastructure: it requires the engagement of a broader ecosystem of industry players, demanding structural and cultural changes across the entire value chain. This collaborative approach will be key to driving innovation and ensuring that the technology meets the demands of the future.
Over the next year, leveraging modern 5G core and RAN network applications on common cloud platforms, the telecoms industry will focus its efforts on:
● Key aspects that differentiate 6G from 5G capabilities.
● Distributed architectures with AI-powered autonomous smart infrastructure.
● Open APIs to streamline interactions between multiple systems and deliver new services.
● Evolving network slicing with AI inference to enable intelligent connectivity.
● Integrating all photonics and non-terrestrial network (NTN) technologies.
As part of these efforts, we will also see service providers explore new 6G-driven use cases, from immersive AR/VR/XR experiences and advanced autonomous vehicles (V2X) to precision positioning and integrated sensing. This exploration can also help achieve more energy-efficient Internet of Things (IoT) integration, driving how we deliver services in remote and far-end operations.
Open source will play a critical role in driving innovation by providing the necessary flexibility, managing unpredictability, and maintaining independence in our rapidly evolving world. The way forward will focus on leveraging AI combined with closed-loop automation to unlock new data-driven services, meet ambitious sustainability goals, and create a better world. In the face of constant disruption, service providers will need to continuously adapt, empowering their teams to transform how they work, differentiate themselves from the competition, and drive business value and operational efficiency.
By Ian Hood, CTO, Telecommunications, Red Hat
