D-Wave and NTT DOCOMO, INC. (DOCOMO), Japan’s largest mobile operator, have announced that DOCOMO has deployed a second D-Wave-powered quantum computing application in production. The new application optimizes tracking area lists (TA-Lists) across multiple tracking areas, balancing location registration and paging signals that typically move in opposite directions. This deployment expands DOCOMO’s production use of quantum computing to a broader network optimization challenge, as compared to its first D-Wave-powered application, which reduced paging signals within tracking areas.
According to the press release, the new application reduced location registration signals generated when devices cross TA-List boundaries by 65.3% at the daily peak while also reducing paging signals by 7.0%, lowering network signaling load and improving operational efficiency. This is significant, said D-Wave, because TA-Lists group geographic areas within a mobile network and must be carefully optimized to reduce signaling load while maintaining network performance and connectivity.
In a representative problem spanning 333 base stations, three TA-Lists and nine tracking areas, it completed the optimization in approximately five minutes, with the results incorporated into DOCOMO’s network planning and day-to-day operations.
“DOCOMO is showing telecom operators around the world what production quantum adoption looks like: move beyond a single use case and apply the technology to distinct, increasingly complex operational challenges,” said Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “Telecom networks are highly complex, resource-constrained environments, and these results demonstrate how D-Wave’s annealing quantum computing technology can help operators improve network performance and efficiency today.”
“With our second production application powered by D-Wave’s hybrid quantum technology, we are applying quantum optimization to a broader and more complex area of network operations,” said Hiroshi Kawakami, Senior Manager of Data Platform Department, NTT DOCOMO, INC. “The application balances two competing network requirements, significantly reducing location registration signaling while also lowering paging signals. Together with our first production application, it demonstrates how quantum computing can help us address multiple aspects of network optimization and use our infrastructure more efficiently.”
