Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:02):
So we're at the Ericsson OSS/BSS Summit 2025 in London. I'm here with Simon Norton. He is director of OSS and Digital networks at the Vodafone Group. Simon, thanks very much for joining us today.

Simon Norton, Vodafone Goup (00:14):
Thanks for having me.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:16):
There's a lot of excitement about advances being made towards autonomous networks. How's that playing out at the Vodafone group?

Simon Norton, Vodafone Goup (00:24):
Well, it's something that we're really committed to on the Vodafone side. So we signed up to the TMF Autonomous Network Manifesto, I think it was around 12 months ago. But we've been very committed to that automation or journey for a lot longer than that at Vodafone. And for us, like many other operators we're after the holy grail of level four, level five automation at the moment. And we're very, very proud actually of some of the advances that we've made, especially around the artificial intelligence operations or as we like to call it, zero touch operation space, where we've already got some really extensive level 3.5 deployments in very important markets. And with the kind of advent of the explosion of agentic technologies and the ability to put what we term the adaptive intelligence layer over the top of the muscle, if we want to call it that, from SDN controllers and orchestrators, we think that we're on the cusp of a real explosion around being able to go significantly further than before.

(01:21):
So very, very focused on it, lots and lots of assessments at the moment so we can understand exactly where we are across our vast set of processes. And then what we're working on is a very structured program to make sure that we attain the highest levels, but we do it for the right reasons. And I think this is one of the interesting things with autonomous network. It is a great technology badge, but if you can't tie it into a business and commercial outcome, you're not really answering the "so what?". And so for us, it's not about going for a uniform, we must be level four. We've got to look at economics, we've got to look what's right for our markets. And of course on the technology side, we want to achieve the highest possible levels of automation for all of the reasons that we know.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:59):
So 5G offers up a lot of possibilities, but also quite a few challenges and complexities. How do you see AI including agentic AI helping here, and what kind of use cases are you focused on?

Simon Norton, Vodafone Goup (02:14):
Well, I think it's completely game changing. So the way that we are increasingly thinking about AI within Vodafone is AI in the network. So that's all of your autonomous network side of things. So this is about being able to deal with the complexity that comes with 5G networks, especially when we start also talking about the open RAN space. And that enables us to do much more in terms of autonomous closed loop optimization, network planning. operation. But equally as well, we're very focused on the AI augmented human within that space as well. And I think that's really interesting because we are doing some very impressive stuff around being able to look at, especially around our 5G investments, how do we bring together the best of our commercial financial, external data sources, crowdsource competitive benchmarking, and make the best possible decisions in terms of where we put our 5G investments for our customers, most importantly, but also to get the economics right as well. So I think really, really exciting across a range of factors. It can transform the way that we plan our network. And then once the network is live, built and it's in its operational phase, obviously autonomous network brings great bottom line efficiency and helps to deliver that experience that our customers expect. And I think increasingly with 5G networks, if you're using traditional human-centric manual modes of operation, that's not going to deliver the experience.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:33):
And then on a broader level, what do you see as the current challenges that you are seeing in terms of the OSS domain in general?

Simon Norton, Vodafone Goup (03:40):
Well, I think this is a really great, great question, and I'd break it down into probably three parts. First is the legacy challenge. And actually one of the things that we're very proud of at Vodafone is about four years ago now, we embarked on a largest ever program, most ambitious ever program of OSS change and simplification. And we did it not just to essentially get rid of legacy out of the network and save money, but we did it because we recognized that if we didn't do that, the economics of being able to get the data into the right data platform and ultimately then build the AI use cases on top would be prohibitive, right? You don't want to be integrating hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of legacy systems. So simplifying the OSS, then you need to get the data part right. And again, I think we're proud at Vodafone that we made a very prescient decision five years ago, not just to unify our network data environment, but our entire data environment.

(04:30):
So commercial IT network with a lot of the investments with Google, in particular, the Google Cloud strategy. And that's been really fundamentally important. Now, I think as we move into this world of agentic, what's very interesting, and presents some challenges is, we are going to have many, many options around where we deploy this technology. And it's not just about deploying it above the cloud layer and always streaming data up there to provide the intelligence. And so the next round for us is really starting to say, how do we set different principles around the use of the technology that can be from the element manager layer available in the OSS umbrella, what do we do with the hyperscalers in the cloud? Getting that right and then having the framework so that you've got the interoperability across those different options, it's a huge opportunity. It also presents some quite significant challenges. And the risk, if you get that wrong, is you end up with quite risky AI sprawl across the business. So maintaining that degree of discipline and making sure that you've got the patterns, the recipes to be able to deal with the different scenarios as they arise, that's going to be vital in terms of being able to do it safely within regulation and also do it at speed.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:34):
But that must also be quite exciting for you as well, to have lots of different options.

Simon Norton, Vodafone Goup (05:40):
Oh, it's exciting and challenging, and this is where I think I go back to that, what I was saying a moment ago around patterns and recipes, right? Because the beauty is we've got phenomenal engineering talent, and in my team alone, I've got an absolutely amazing OSS team with years, decades, and decades experience. But increasingly we're pairing them with more the digital native generation, digital and AI native. And if we get that right, the way that they riff off each other is absolutely incredible from an engineering organization. But if we don't set the guardrails and set out the patterns and principles that can very easily turn into dysfunction. So I think getting that right on the talent and culture side and setting those guardrails within which they can then innovate and innovate safely, that's a really important point. For me, it's arguably as important as the ability to build and deploy the tech.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:28):
Excellent. Well, fantastic insights, Simon. Thanks very much for joining us today.

Simon Norton, Vodafone Goup (06:32):
Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.