Exfo uses AI to reassure 5G operators

Testing and service assurance vendor Exfo has launched some new cleverness designed to take the stress out of managing a 5G network.

In case nobody told you, 5G is a lot more complicated than any of the previous Gs, so much so that it’s just too much for mere people to get their heads around. That’s where artificial intelligence comes to the rescue, with its omniscience and ability to learn on the job. Exfo reckoned it was about time its service assurance platform made the most of AI so it has launched Nova Adaptive Service Assurance.

The cleverest bit of it seems to be Nova SensAI (possibly a play on the word ‘Sensei’), which Exfo describes as its central nervous system. As you may have guessed, it’s all about using AI and machine learning to analyse the many layers of the network and offer a good view of them. Exfo claims it will uncover network issues no other equivalent platform can, possibly even before they’ve happened.

“The combination of more users, more connections, more apps and more convoluted networks has created a perfect storm of complexity for operators,” said Philippe Morin, EXFO CEO. “By delivering only the right data at the right time, Nova A|SA is a unique intelligent automation platform to provide operators with 100% visibility into user experience and network performance. We’re talking about operations teams being able to resolve issues in minutes rather than days—or preventing them entirely.”

We’d be lying if we said we had any way of verifying those claims, but as the nature of the launch implies, this is all very complicated stuff. We do know that Exfo is up against some pretty stiff competition in the 5G service assurance space, with all its competitors also claiming to take the stress out of 5G for operators. Telecoms CTOs would seem to have their work cut out picking the best one.