SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) - Telco M1 Limited and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) are collaborating to develop artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to improve the operations of mobile networks.

Both parties inked a research collaboration agreement on Wednesday (Jan 8) to reduce the manual analysis of "a huge amount of network key performance indicators", which are labour intensive, and may be prone to error, they said in a joint media statement.

The partnership was also established in order to meet the diverse requirements of emerging mobile applications, and the complexity of the impending 5G network deployment, M1 and SIT said.

M1 will use real-world data from its mobile network to provide domain knowledge for data preprocessing, analysis, visualisation and interpretation.

Meanwhile, SIT will also research and jointly develop algorithms for AI machine learning to detect mobile traffic anomalies, and predict the volume of mobile traffic.

The purpose of this project is to develop a performance anomaly detection methodology by using deep neural networks (DNN), said M1 and SIT. Another goal is to leverage DNN to model and predict active users in mobile networks, based on historical mobile traffic data.

In addition, SIT students will also have opportunities to be involved as part of their integrated work study programme and projects.

M1's latest tie-up with SIT comes after it similarly inked a partnership with the Nanyang Technological University to develop Singapore's first 5G cellular vehicle-to-everything, or C-V2X, research test-bed and trials.

Last July, the telco also announced that it is collaborating with the Singapore University of Technology and Design to jointly develop 5G technologies for advanced robotics systems.

M1 is owned by Keppel Corporation and Singapore Press Holdings, which publishes The Straits Times and The Business Times. The telco delisted from the Singapore bourse in April 2019 following a privisation offer.