Ericsson steps up focus on R&D in India

Ericsson recently announced that it will increase its focus on Network APIs at its India R&D Centres. Network APIs enable both new and existing industries to benefit from telecoms networks' increased capabilities. Today, as service providers deliver 5G benefits to consumers and businesses, they have the opportunity to transform the network into an innovation platform by making advanced 5G network capabilities available to the global developer community via open network application programming interfaces (APIs). Programmatic interfaces, for example, can enable features such as quality on demand and network slicing. High-performance, open, programmable networks built on the 5G standalone (SA) architecture create new prospects for service innovation and performance-based business models.

In this context, Ericsson has launched a new partnership with some of the service providers, including Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, to integrate and sell APIs on a global scale to drive innovation in digital services. Network APIs allow you to quickly access, use, and pay for network features. The partnership would facilitate the installation and access to common APIs from numerous telecom service providers across a bigger ecosystem of developer platforms.

Andres Vicente, Ericsson's Head of Southeast Asia, Oceania, and India, said, "We are increasing our focus on AI, Gen AI, and Network APIs in our R&D Centres in India. The combination of high-performance and programmable networks, network APIs, and a thriving developer community will result in a powerful network effect of growth and innovation. And with its flourishing developer and startup ecosystem, India stands to benefit greatly from this. The R&D teams will focus on creating programmable/API capabilities to provide simplified and secure network interfaces, as well as advanced use cases such as device management, security, and fraud detection.

Engineering teams at Ericsson R&D sites in Chennai, Bengaluru, and Gurugram concentrate on telecom areas such as transport, packet core, OSS, BSS, cloud, and advanced AI technologies. The Ericsson 6G Research teams in India are focussing on a variety of advanced technologies, including intent-based autonomous telecom networks, trustworthy AI, sustainable AI, and advanced generative AI capabilities. Ericsson is now also collaborating with India's institutes for radio, AI, and cloud research.

Ericsson has effectively integrated AI into its product and service offerings, deploying AI solutions in client networks to address difficulties in network planning, implementation, and operations. Ericsson used Generative AI to create intelligent assistants that allow engineers to converse with the network in plain language while obtaining crucial network insights from numerous data sources. This has considerably reduced the time required to do duties like network monitoring and troubleshooting.

AI and Generative AI can help telecom networks become more sophisticated and energy efficient. The brain-inspired AI demo demonstrates how to dramatically cut AI computation energy usage in future 6G networks. The robotic dog demo demonstrates how AI, robotics, and 5G may be utilised together to secure enterprise safety, such as against fire hazards or intrusions.

Ericsson demos at the India Mobile Congress are organised into four clusters: 5G for Consumers, 5G for Enterprises, 5G and Beyond, and Programmable Networks. 5G and Beyond covers the route to 6G, with the company showing some of the work being done by Ericsson R&D Centres in the areas of AI and Gen AI.

Ericsson has partnered with Indian CSPs for generations of connectivity. Ericsson has worked with Bharti Airtel and Jio on their 5G rollouts, and it just signed a 4G and 5G RAN contract with Vi. "We look forward to helping Vi seamlessly introduce 5G and in supporting Airtel in its transition to a full-scale 5G Standalone network," Andres Vicente stated.