The next Town Hall Innovation Series will take place on Monday, March 4 during the 2024 Spring Meeting
The Town Hall Innovation Series host Strategic themed discussions for each face-to-face meeting that:
Align with BBF strategic vision
Highlight industry trends
Directly impacts or influences future BBF work
Our topic for this session will be Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
DOWNLOAD A COPY OF THE SLIDE DECK
Monday, March 4th - Starting @ 08:30 Local Time (tentative subject to update)
Town Hall Agenda Overview:
- The Spring Meeting sessions are scheduled to take place in to be added which is the to be added Time Zone.
08:30 Introduction of the Town Hall Innovation Session on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Mauro Tilocca, TIM
By: Mauro Tilocca, TIM, BBF Service Provider Action Council Chair and Town Hall Innovation Series Co-Chair
Data and AI Architecture Strategy - Deutsche Telekom Perspective
The talk will address Deutsche Telekom’s perspective for Data and AI architecture, including key use case categories, challenges, and aspects of relevance for network operators.
Mohammad Sharifan, Deutsche Telekom
Presented by: Mohammad Sharifan, Lead Architect Data&AI, Deutsche Telekom AG
AI based Cognitive Robotics: Changing the Way we Work
Cognitive Robotics is the next big thing in automation. Giving senses to the robotics instead of adding them in the surrounding, makes robots truly safe and intelligent. In order to be fully instrumental the robots need to get connected via high speed connectivity. There are different options possible. Edge and Cloud solutions play a key role and will be described in this talk. The key role of 5G/6G technologies in combination with fixed broadband solutions are illustrated.
Bernd Heinrichs, NEURA Robotics
Presented by: Bernd Heinrich, Chief Growth Officer, NEURA Robotics
I am the Chief Growth Officer at NEURA Robotics, where we are developing assistants to serve humanity. With my team I am driving the evolution of the company towards becoming the dominating technology provider in the automation space.
As the Co-CEO of Wandelbots, I led the scaling process of the company to become the global leader in democratizing robotics with data and no-code platforms. With over 30 years of experience in technology, innovation, and business leadership, I have a proven track record of driving growth, transformation, and value creation for various organizations and customers across different industries and geographies.
My passion is to change the normal and focus on innovation, which I believe are the foundations for a successful future for businesses nowadays. I have demonstrated this in my previous roles as the Chief Digital Officer & Executive Vice President of Mobility Solutions at Bosch, the Managing Director of Industrial Solutions and openBerlin Innovation Center at Cisco, Managing Director for Commercial Business and Channel at Cisco, and the Section Manager of Fixed Networking at Ericsson. I am also an active investor and advisor for several startups and initiatives in the fields of robotics, IoT, AI, Circular Economics and digitalization. My mission is to leverage the convergence of multiple technology innovations enabled by connectivity, and to improve the performance and experiences of organizations, devices, and people.
AI&ML for TIM network
Data driven and Machine Learning based projects within TIM will be presented, focusing on some of the AI/ML solutions for telco network management and optimization. The aim is to share concrete use cases on which TIM is taking advantage of these technologies, some lessons learnt as well as highlighting certain areas of improvement.
Roberta Giannantonio, TIM
Presented by: Roberta Giannantonio, Head of Data Network Learning (AI for Operations), TIM
Graduated in Telecommunication Engineering at Politecnico di Torino in 2004, joined TIM being involved in innovation projects about Wireless Technologies, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. She is currently leading, within TIM, innovation activities about Artificial Intelligence applied to telco data and network.
Roberta Giannantonio , PMP®, works in the Strategy Department of Telecom Italia.
Harnessing Machine Learning for Enhanced Optical Networks: A State of the Art Update from IRTF and IETF
This talk examines the role of Machine Learning (ML) in advancing optical transport networks, a key area in modern telecommunications. It focuses on how ML can improve optical network performance, reliability, and scalability, particularly through predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, resource allocation, and security. A significant aspect is the use of the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Event Condition Action (ECA) framework, originally designed for general network management automation and now adapted for optical networks with ML integration for smarter operations. The discussion will include and introduction to the IETF's ECA framework and YANG models, powerful tools for implementing ML in optical network management. The session will also provide some real-world examples to illustrate how these technologies impact on optical network efficiency and future potential, highlighting ongoing ML research and developments by the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and the engineering work in the IETF.
Adrian Farrel, Old Dog Consulting
Presented by: Adrian Farrel, Managing Director, Old Dog Consulting
Adrian Farrel is Technical Advisor to the IETF's Traffic Engineering Architecture and Signaling working group and a former IETF Routing Area Director.
Adrian co-founded Aria Networks, applying machine learning to the planning and operation of transport networks, and now work at Old Dog Consulting innovating and standardising routing solutions.
10:30 - 11:00 Morning Break
AI/ML use cases for Access Network Management
Thanks to the vast amount of telemetry generated by network devices, innovative AI/ML techniques such as Anomaly Detection, Digital Twin and Large Language Models can be harnessed to extract valuable insights from network data and elevate closed-loop automation use cases to new heights. These solutions facilitate proactive network optimization, fault prediction, and resource allocation based on real-time network conditions.
Benoît Drooghaag, Nokia
Presented by: Benoît Drooghaag, AI/ML Application Expert, Nokia
As AI/ML engineer and data scientist, Benoît is focusing on innovative solutions for SDN controller.
He holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and has more than 20 years of experience in access network automation and predictive maintenance.
In 2019, he received the Top Inventor Award from Nokia. He likes to find inspiration for new ideas in reading, listening to jazz music and ... in data!
AI Applications and Impacts on Broadband Network
Autonomous networking has been proposed in recent years, and this presentation showcases the latest developments on intelligent solutions for access and broadband networks. AI-enhanced solutions enable value-added cases in various network operations, including planning, installation, maintenance, and optimization. Two key AI functions, analysis and prediction, are highlighted in various cases, along with the telemetry mechanism that facilitates building big data. The introduction of intelligence greatly changes the focal point of network operations and promotes automation to a higher level. The presentation also shares the latest level evaluation of broadband network.
Aihua Guo, Futurewei
Presented by: Aihua Guo, Principal Architect, Optical Transport & Access Standards
Dr. Aihua Guo is a Principal Architect of Optical Transport and Access Standards at Futurewei Technologies USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and is responsible for the standardization development for optical and broadband access. Dr. Guo has extensive experience leading R&D software development in optical networking and is an active contributor to various IETF and BBF standards as well as to open-source projects in software-defined networking. He is the author of two book chapters and numerous conference and journal papers.
EU funded AI@EDGE innovation project
The objective is to share the EU funded innovative project AI@EDGE proposals on how to bring the intelligence to the edge of the network. The AI@EDGE project will present the overall architecture and main components needed to bring the intelligence to the edge in future (B5G/6G) networks. AI@EDGE project will present Network and Service Automation Platform (NSAP) and Connect-Compute Platform (CCP) with new modules/functions/services and interfaces for AI based Orchestration of AI Function (AIF), with dynamic AIFs placement on decentralized and distributed CCP. The key components, Multi-Tier Orchestrator (MTO) & Intelligent Orchestrator Component (IOC) exploiting data and AI/ML pipeline, will be addressed together with further challenges such as E2E support for connectivity, computation and data services among multiple workloads.
Jovanka Adzic, TIM
Presented by: Jovanka Adzic, Technical & Project Leader
Jovanka Adzic has been working, since 1996, in Telecom Italia on innovative solutions and systems based on Data Warehouse, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Advanced Data Analytics and Data Mining technologies, also managing the development of the system for fraud detection on the mobile radio network. She received degree in Computer Science at the University of Torino and master’s degree in Informatics and Telecommunications from COREP - Polytechnic of Turin.
13:00 Closing
If you would like to share this event with a non-member please contact us at info@broadband-forum.org for registration