• Deutsche Telekom is committed to being an AI-native telco
• It already has AI embedded in its operations and has launched multiple AI-enabled products
• Now it has forged a partnership with OpenAI focused on the development of advanced AI applications for the telco’s customers

Deutsche Telekom has further cemented its reputation as one of the leading AI-native telcos by announcing a multi-year collaboration with ChatGPT developer OpenAI focused on the development of advanced AI applications that will be used by the operator’s employees and offered to its customers across Europe.

The giant operator, which was the co-host for TelecomTV’s recent AI-Native Telco Forum event, has for years been developing AI products and services for its own operations as well as for its customers. As part of the new collaboration, Deutsche Telekom (DT) will gain early access to an “alpha-phase model” from OpenAI that the partners will use to “design new AI-powered products and improve how people communicate”, the operator announced, with the first pilots of “simple, personal and multilingual AI experiences” planned for the first quarter of 2026. 

It will also make ChatGPT Enterprise available to its group employees, who will “gain secure access to OpenAI’s most capable tools, helping teams work more effectively, improve customer service, and spend more time on innovation,” the operator noted.

DT has operations in Austria, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, as well as its domestic market in Germany.  

“AI will also play a larger role in customer care, internal copilots and network operations as the group advances toward more autonomous, self-healing networks,” it added. 

That’s something that DT is already doing with its RAN Guardian Agent (developed in collaboration with Google Cloud), which is now in use in its production network. Ahmed Hafez, DT’s senior VP of network strategy and data & AI in networks, told the audience at the recent AI-Native Telco Forum that RAN Guardian is part of the operator’s new wave of generative and agentic AI deployments – and “is a multi-agent system that self-heals and optimises radio networks in real time, dynamically adjusting configurations ahead of congestion or local events.” 

Commenting on the new collaboration with OpenAI, Abdu Mudesir, board member for product and technology at Deutsche Telekom, stated: “This is not a typical vendor relationship, it is a strategic collaboration helping shape the future of AI in Europe. Together with OpenAI, we are building next-generation products, strengthening our core operations with AI. We are focused on making AI intuitive, secure and meaningful in everyday life for our customers, employees and our networks.”   

Brad Lightcap, COO at OpenAI, added: “Deutsche Telekom brings AI experience, best quality networks, and trust and deep customer reach in Europe. With our frontier research and enterprise platform, we’re supporting them in upgrading and strengthening operations, and deploying advanced AI across both customer experiences and internal workflows.” 

And according to this OpenAI announcement about the collaboration, DT is helping to extend the AI giant’s relationships with “the world’s largest and most established enterprises, including Accenture, Walmart⁠, Salesforce⁠, PayPal⁠, Intuit, Target, Thermo Fisher⁠, BNY⁠, Morgan Stanley, BBVA and many more. “More than 1 million business customers around the world are directly using OpenAI – the fastest-growing business platform in history,” it boasted. 

DT is already at the heart of AI developments in Europe. This summer, it launched its AI-phone (the T Phone 3, developed in partnership with Perplexity) in 10 European markets. It has built what it calls “the world’s first industrial AI cloud” in Germany with Nvidia, and is at the heart of other sovereign AI initiatives in the region. 

It has also just announced it has teamed up with the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS), and Merheim Hospital, part of Kliniken der Stadt Köln (Cologne City Hospitals), to develop AI agents for emergency room support. 

To stay up to speed with the latest AI-native telco developments, check out our dedicated content channel. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV