Building Trust in Autonomous Networks
白皮书
Autonomous networks are the most important transformation in telecom service and network management in decades. AI-driven, intent-based, and closed-loop by design, these networks are built to automatically configure, optimize, heal, and protect themselves.
Converging demands are driving autonomous network momentum. High service quality is essential, as enterprises and consumers demand seamless, reliable experiences that meet strict service-level agreements (SLAs). At the same time, performance pressures are increasing, and company boards are mandating reduced operational expenses, improved customer experiences, and faster investment returns on 5G, cloud, and edge deployments.
Meanwhile, the network is undergoing a dramatic and complex transformation into cloud-native, software-based, disaggregated networks carrying diverse traffic workloads with extreme technical requirements, and supporting innovative new capabilities, such as network slicing.
Meeting these new realities requires a level of scale and agility that far exceeds manual management capabilities, making autonomous networks essential.
The TM Forum, a global alliance of 800+ organizations across the connectivity ecosystem, has created a phased autonomous networks maturity model and framework that defines six stages of network autonomy, from manual (Level 0) to fully automated (Level 5). Operators today are advancing toward Level 4, high autonomy.
Automation without confirmed proof of performance risks failure, making continuous testing critical to the success of autonomous networks. When automation is validated in the lab and the live network, it builds trust, accelerates adoption, and ensures outcomes.
Test and assurance play an essential role in autonomous networks, providing a validation layer from lab to live, across 5G RAN, core, and cloud. This is helping operators accelerate progress along the autonomous network roadmap with confidence, safeguarded SLAs, and differentiated customer experiences.
This white paper details why autonomous networks are important and how continuous test and active assurance embedded across lab, staging, and live operations helps operators move toward full and trusted autonomy.