Humans Beware: Ericsson Readies Machines to Run the Network Light Reading

Enthusiastically boarding the artificial intelligence bandwagon, Ericsson will unveil a handful of "machine intelligence" products at this week's Mobile World Congress as it tries to close the gap with Chinese rival Huawei. Forthcoming products will include a chatbot designed to support mobile network technicians as well as a "self-learning" tool that shifts network resources between basestations to suit traffic levels and user needs. The basestation technology is already in trials with Vodafone Spain, which plans to use it in commercial networks this year. Pioneered by US tech giants like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), artificial intelligence and machine learning are attracting growing interest from telecom network vendors hunting for new sales opportunities. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. plans to launch an AI-enabled computing platform called Atlas this year and has also developed a system it calls Wireless Intelligence for the automation in 5G networks of the "beamforming" process, which focuses signals on end-user devices.