EEricsson NetCloud Assistant (ANA)

Ericsson’s NetCloud platform manages connectivity for 37,000 enterprises and 2.9 million devices, according to Ericsson, and every one of those customers can now ask an AI assistant why a branch router is offline. That assistant is ANA, the AI-based NetCloud Assistant, launched in January 2025 as a generative AI virtual expert and upgraded in September 2025 with agentic AI that Ericsson called the first of its kind for enterprise 5G.

ANA is best for IT teams that already run Ericsson cellular routers, wireless WAN or Ericsson Private 5G across many locations and want faster troubleshooting without calling support. The main points to weigh are that it works inside NetCloud, and several of its agents were announced as planned features rather than shipped ones. There is no standalone price; it comes with NetCloud subscriptions sold on quoted terms. We rate it 7.9/10 on our scale. We have not used ANA ourselves; this review is based on Ericsson’s announcements, trade press coverage and Gartner Peer Insights reviews of the NetCloud platform.

Scale, Timing and the Promises Ericsson Has Made

Ericsson has shared fewer hard results for ANA than for its hardware, but the figures below give a sense of scale, timing and what Ericsson promises.

The installed base is the most useful number for a buyer. ANA is not a new product looking for customers; it is a feature switched on inside a console that tens of thousands of organizations already use, which means low adoption friction for existing NetCloud shops.

Ericsson’s own framing is telling. Pankaj Malhotra, who leads wireless WAN and security in Ericsson’s enterprise wireless unit, has said NetCloud is differentiated by how it simplifies deployment, management and troubleshooting of cellular networking, and described the agentic work as a foundation for self-optimizing 5G enterprise networks. Manish Tiwari, head of enterprise 5G, tied the upgrade to bringing Ericsson Private 5G into the same platform. Both point to the same goal: fewer support calls from customers running cellular networks at scale.

The 20% reduction in downtime and support cases is a design target, not a measured result from a named customer. Treat it as a benchmark to check against your own ticket history after a few months of use.

An Answer Assistant Plus an Agent Framework in NetCloud

ANA sits inside the NetCloud management console. Ericsson describes two layers: an assistant that answers questions and an agent framework that carries out work.

The Assistant Layer

A large language model on the back end is grounded in Ericsson’s technical documentation library, the NetCloud data lake and a wider wireless library. IT staff ask questions in a chat interface, and ANA combines what it knows about that customer’s own network with the documentation to give specific answers on configuration, troubleshooting and recommended actions. It can present results as graphs and tables. Ericsson says all of ANA’s AI components run in Ericsson’s own environment, so queries are not sent to outside chatbot services.

The Agent Layer

The September 2025 upgrade added what Ericsson calls an agentic organizational hierarchy:

• Orchestrator agents: supervise other agents and run workflows. The first is a troubleshooting orchestrator for common issues such as offline devices and poor signal quality.
• Functional agents: task, process, knowledge and decision agents that each handle part of a job and link together within the framework.
• Planned agents: configuration, deployment and policy agents, which Ericsson said would follow in 2026.
• Process view: ANA displays the steps its agents take in real time, and explainable AI features include dynamic graphs.

A Typical Troubleshooting Request

Pieced together from Ericsson’s descriptions, a request can flow like this. An administrator notices a site has dropped off and asks ANA what happened. ANA pulls the device’s recent data from the NetCloud data lake, checks AIOps for related anomalies such as rising latency or jitter, and matches the pattern against Ericsson’s documentation. If a troubleshooting orchestrator is enabled, it hands parts of the job to functional agents: one gathers status, another applies process steps, another draws on knowledge articles, and a decision agent weighs the options. ANA shows each step as it runs, then returns a diagnosis and recommended action, often with a graph of the signal or traffic trend. The administrator decides whether to apply the fix.

This is the part of the product Ericsson says can turn hours or days of IT work into minutes. The value depends on how routine your incidents are: offline devices and weak signal are the documented targets, while unusual faults still end up with an engineer.

AIOps Underneath

ANA works alongside NetCloud AIOps, which detects anomalies such as latency and jitter. Ericsson expanded AIOps to cover wireless WAN, NetCloud SASE and Private 5G, isolating and correlating fault, performance, configuration and accounting anomalies. For Private 5G it adds service health analytics, KPI monitoring and device connectivity diagnostics.

IT Managers Still Approve Changes and Replace Hardware

Agents plan and execute tasks under administrator direction. An IT manager still decides what to change, approves actions and handles anything outside the agents’ scope, such as hardware replacement or carrier issues. Setup is light for existing customers because ANA lives in the console they already use.

Bundled With NetCloud Routers and Private 5G on Quoted Terms

Ericsson does not sell ANA on its own. It is part of the NetCloud platform, which is bought alongside Ericsson’s enterprise routers and Private 5G on quoted terms.

Valuing ANA by Troubleshooting Time Rather Than Line Items

Because ANA comes inside NetCloud, the question for most buyers is time saved rather than a line-item price. The volumes below are our own illustrative assumptions applied to Ericsson’s stated targets.

• A retailer with 500 branch routers: if the IT team logs 600 network support cases a year, the 20% target would mean about 120 fewer cases a year.
• A field operations team: if troubleshooting an offline router takes two hours of engineer time and ANA brings that to minutes, as Ericsson claims, 50 such incidents a month would return close to 100 engineer hours.
• A new Private 5G site: the cost is set by the Private 5G deployment itself; ANA and AIOps add monitoring and diagnostics on top without a separate tool.

Other costs to watch: hardware refresh cycles, since ANA only covers NetCloud-managed devices, and the cost of renewing NetCloud subscriptions across many sites. Reviewers of the platform on Gartner Peer Insights mention that hardware is expensive.

Ericsson NetCloud Assistant Compared With Nokia Autonomous Network Fabric, Blue Planet and Resolve AI

ANA sits between telecom network automation and IT operations tools, so the closest alternatives come from both sides.

The deeper difference is who the buyer is. Nokia and Blue Planet sell to carriers that operate public networks, and their agents work on radio, transport and service inventory at that scale. ANA is aimed at the enterprise customer of those networks: the IT team that runs routers at branches and remote sites and needs those links to stay up. Resolve AI sits further away again, investigating incidents in software systems rather than wireless links, though some teams may use both.

For an enterprise already on Ericsson routers, ANA is the obvious first step because it is already in the console they use. Operators running their own networks should look at Nokia or Blue Planet instead, and software teams chasing application incidents will get more from Resolve AI. Browse more in our AI agents for telecom and IT and DevOps guides.

Multi-Site Ericsson Router Fleets and Lean IT Teams

• Multi-site enterprises on Ericsson routers: organizations that already manage branch and remote devices in NetCloud get ANA in the same console.
• Lean IT teams: ANA gives specific answers from documentation and live network data, which helps teams without a dedicated wireless specialist.
• Ericsson Private 5G customers: AIOps service health analytics and diagnostics cover Private 5G on NetCloud.
• Teams adding Private 5G to wireless WAN: one console covers both, with role-based permissions for Private 5G administrators.
• Organizations that rely on vendor documentation: ANA’s answers are grounded in Ericsson’s own technical library, which reduces time spent searching manuals.
• Security-conscious buyers: AI components are hosted in Ericsson’s environment rather than sent to outside chatbot services.

Other Router Brands and Carrier Network Operators

• Organizations on other router vendors: ANA only works with NetCloud-managed hardware.
• Telecom operators: ANA manages enterprise wireless WAN and Private 5G, not carrier core or radio networks.
• Teams wanting fully hands-off automation: agents act under administrator direction.
• Teams that want deep WAN optimization: some Gartner Peer Insights reviewers rate NetCloud’s WAN optimization below rival vendors.
• Buyers comparing AI features on price: there is no separate price to compare.

Agents Announced as Planned and Agents Already Live

• Announced versus shipped: the troubleshooting orchestrator and the configuration, deployment and policy agents were announced as planned. Ask which ones are live in your account.
• Vendor targets: the 20% cut in downtime and support cases and the hours-to-minutes claim come from Ericsson.
• Platform commitment: value depends on keeping your fleet on Ericsson hardware and NetCloud subscriptions.
• Mixed reception: a Telecoms.com analysis framed the agentic upgrade as possibly incremental and said its benefits depend on it working as intended.
• Platform-level reviews: Gartner Peer Insights ratings cover NetCloud Manager as a whole, not ANA specifically; reviewers mention hardware cost, notifications they would like improved and WAN optimization that trails some rivals.

Agentic AI and Private 5G Join NetCloud in 2025

• On September 22, 2025, FutureCIO reported that Ericsson integrated agentic AI into NetCloud and planned Ericsson Private 5G on the platform for the fourth quarter of 2025.
• On January 14, 2025, Ericsson launched ANA as a generative AI virtual expert for enterprise wireless WAN.

Included and Worth Using for Existing NetCloud Customers

For organizations already on Ericsson NetCloud, yes: ANA is part of the platform, it keeps AI processing inside Ericsson’s environment, and its agents target the troubleshooting work that eats IT time across many sites. It scores 7.9/10 on our scale. Ease of setup, security design and the platform’s 4.6 Gartner Peer Insights rating help; published pricing, support beyond Ericsson hardware and more agent autonomy would lift it further.

Reviewers of the NetCloud platform on Gartner Peer Insights give it 4.6 out of 5 from 83 ratings, with 61% five-star and none below three stars. They praise ease of use, built-in LTE, router security and support, while their requests center on hardware cost and notifications. Those reviews cover the platform rather than ANA, but they describe the environment ANA lives in.

It is not a reason to switch router vendors on its own. Check which agents are live, measure support cases before and after, and judge it against Ericsson’s 20% target.

Data Privacy, Free Access and Agent Autonomy in ANA

Is Ericsson NetCloud Assistant Free?

ANA has no standalone price. It is part of the NetCloud platform, which Ericsson sells with its enterprise routers and Private 5G on quoted terms.

Does ANA Send My Network Data to ChatGPT or Other Outside Services?

Ericsson says ANA’s AI components are hosted entirely in Ericsson’s environment, so queries stay internal rather than going to external chatbot services.

What Can ANA’s Agents Do on Their Own?

Orchestrator and functional agents can plan and run tasks such as troubleshooting offline devices and poor signal quality, but under administrator direction. Ericsson announced configuration, deployment and policy agents for 2026.

Does ANA Work With Ericsson Private 5G?

Yes. Ericsson planned to bring Private 5G into NetCloud in the fourth quarter of 2025, with AIOps service health analytics, KPI monitoring and device connectivity diagnostics.

Which Jobs Sit Outside Ericsson NetCloud Assistant?

It manages hardware within NetCloud rather than other vendors’ devices, it is built for enterprise networks rather than carrier networks, and it acts under administrator direction. Physical faults such as failed hardware still need an engineer.