# Shift Towards Intent-Based Autonomous Operations in Telecommunications

The telecommunications industry has been experiencing a renaissance, driven by technological advancements like 5G, IoT, cloud computing, and AI. This has led to increasingly complex network management needs, requiring automation for routine tasks and real-time issue response. However, there is a gap in the skill sets of traditional communication service providers (CSPs) and these evolving demands. To meet these challenges, CSPs are building diverse teams including data scientists, software developers, and service assurance engineers. Meanwhile, there is a technological shift towards intent-based networking (IBN) and autonomous networks (AN), which have the potential to revolutionize network management and bridge the talent gap within telcos. These advancements rely on translating high-level network objectives expressed in natural language (“intents”) into network policies and configurations, and using generative AI to automate network self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-healing.

## A Motivating Case: New Service Introductions without Intent

The need for streamlining interactions between CSP teams and the network is evident when introducing new services. The process involves operational support systems (OSS) using orchestrators, assurance systems, and policy managers, creating a tight coupling of services with human-designed TOSCA service descriptors, configurations, and policies.

## Understanding Intents

In the context of IBN, intents refer to high-level objectives that CSPs want to achieve in their network. They replace the complex low-level network configurations during the initial operations with more human-readable expressions of network objectives.

## Perspectives of IBN and AN

IBN and AN have the potential to reshape network management in various operations stages, including preparation for new services, introduction of new services, automated generation of vendor-specific resource drivers, simplification of service orders, feasibility checks, and dynamic service assurance.

## The Challenges with IBN and AN

Two main challenges in implementing IBN and AN are how to express and convey an intent and how to execute on an intent, which highlights the need for structured frameworks and evolution of intent handlers into autonomous systems.

For further details and insights into the challenges and opportunities of IBN and AN, you may contact the authors at maja.curic@ibm.com, chris.van.maastricht@nl.ibm.com and tmtattis@ae.ibm.com.

*Disclaimer: The content written above is based on the original source.*

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**FAQs**

**Q: What is intent-based networking (IBN)?**
Intent-based networking refers to the practice of translating high-level network objectives expressed in natural language (“intents”) into network policies and configurations. It aims to simplify network management by enabling automated interpretation and application of network objectives.

**Q: What are autonomous networks (AN)?**
Autonomous networks (AN) utilize intents as inputs to autonomously self-configure, self-optimize, and self-heal networks as their conditions evolve, promising increased network reliability and responsiveness.

**Q: What are the challenges of IBN and AN?**
The main challenges include effectively expressing and conveying intents, and evolving intent handlers into autonomous systems while relying less on human intervention.

*Disclaimer: The FAQs have been collated based on the article.*