AI MEETS NETWORKS: SPARKS PREVENT FIRES

From blind date to foresight, Al and networks can now predict mishaps, prevent outages, and help operators stay ahead of the flames

- BY PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

What do firefighters ask Santa Claus? Ok, they are perhaps too grownup for that, but if they were to make a wistful wish, what might they go for? No traffic jams? Possibly.

Faster trucks? Certainly. No cats on the ledges? Definitely. Bigger hoses and buckets? Why not. Tougher blankets? Never hurts.

The answer, however, lies not in the smoke or the flames—but in the calm before the siren. It begins far ahead, even before the alarm bell rings or the call reaches the fire station. If firefighters could ask for something miraculous, it might be something deceptively simple yet notoriously hard to get—what if humans could detect a fire before the smoke spirals out of control?

This is precisely the sort of preemptive thinking now emerging in network operations rooms—across telecom operators, cloud providers, and data infrastructure teams. The question they are asking is no longer “What went wrong?” but “Can we know before it goes wrong?” The hope is that Artificial Intelligence (Al) may finally offer the predictive capability that decades of reactive network management could not.

AI INTELLIGENCE: AN OPERATOR’S FANTASY

The intelligence and real-time footwork that Al brings in can mean a whopping impact when translated into speed, precision and analytics in the realm of networks.

In the past, Al’s role was mainly limited to analytics, decision support, and tasks such as fault prediction or capacity optimisation. But as Arvind Khurana, Regional Vice President and Country Head — Cloud and Network Services, Nokia India, captures it, today, Al is evolving to operate in real time, enabling autonomous, on-the-fly decision-making, powering capabilities like dynamic resource allocation, self-optimisation, and preventive assurance. “Al is essential for telecom operators as it forms the foundation of truly autonomous networks.”