Artificial intelligence is key to self-driving networks

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which wrote the original specification for network functions virtualisation (NFV), has set up its experiential network intelligence industry specification group to handle the task. He sees many parallels between the evolution of cars and where networks can get to. "Years ago, cars were painfully manual, but we've made it much more convenient and 14 years ago we started looking at self-driving cars, which is an absolute disruptive change." In order for self-driving networks to become a reality, vendors and providers must fully collaborate, he says. Interestingly, ETSI's AI initiative, which has an initial two-year work programme, is coming from vendors, ETSI director general Luis Jorge Romero told GTB at Mobile World Congress.