Zain Group, a leading ICT service provider in Middle East and Africa and Huawei announce the successful testing of the first AI-In-Network use case: site power saving, an intelligence-based energy-saving solution. The successful launch took place during the recent Zain Group and Huawei ICT Technology Summit 2022, marking Zain Group’s Intelligence-based network transformation and entry into the Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) era. Additionally, the use case fast-tracks Zain Group's ambitious transition to Net Zero by 2050.
Zain’s and Huawei’s teams verified the Intelligence-based energy-saving use case in August 2022 by applying the Intelligent Power Saving tool of Huawei IntelligentRAN (Next-generation Wireless Network Intelligent Architecture) in Kuwait’s urban areas. With this solution, online learning and prediction capabilities are deployed to provide more accurate energy-saving policies for networks.
Compared with traditional energy-saving methods, the intelligent energy-power-saving solution provides more flexible power-saving policy orchestration based on stable network KPIs, enabling power-saving in off-peak hours to power-saving throughout the day.
The results have been remarkable: Zain achieved power savings of up to 22.9% in its 5G network, up to 12.9% in 4G, and up to 8.9% in 2G.
Nawaf AlGharabally, CTO of Zain Group, said, "Our ambition across our footprint is to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050. The AI-In-Network is a very compelling use case as the energy savings align with our broader decarbonization goals by combining technology innovation and the injection of intelligence when programming optimization algorithms. I hope this successful venture encourages the regional telecom industry to utilize AI sooner than later in their energy saving roadmap."
Meanwhile, David Wang, Huawei, executive director of the board, chairman of ICT Infrastructure managing board, noted, "Both parties have made steadfast efforts in this domain in the past few years. Thanks to all the team members' outstanding contributions, I am glad to see we achieved significant power savings for Zain's 5G network using intelligent technology. ADN is the standout technology to help operators digitize their operations towards achieving the ultimate customer experience, automatic O&M, and efficient resource and energy utilization. Huawei will continuously work with Zain to incubate more intelligent use cases towards Zain's 2025 L4 autonomous network strategy."
Zain has been a pioneer in embracing digital transformation and has bold ambitions to build an autonomous network level 4 by 2025 powered by intelligence.
Actively advocating green and low-carbon operation modes, in 2020, Zain commenced disclosing its climate action to CDP and one year later in 2021 achieved an A- score demonstrating its leadership in taking action against climate change. Zain’s ambition is to be Net Zero by 2050 as per GSMA and IPCC recommendations because it understood that exposure to climate risks can only be avoided if emissions due to human activities are brought to levels that close to zero.
