Can Google Cloud meet the autonomous network needs of telcos?
By Ray Le Maistre
Jun 18, 2025
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Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
We are in Copenhagen for the TM four's, DTW Ignite 2025. I'm here with Angelo Libertucci. He's Global head of Industry for telecom at Google Cloud. Angelo, great to have you with us today. Thanks very much for joining Telecom tv.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (00:20):
Great to be here as well. Thank you so much for having me.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:22):
So one of the key themes here at this event is nearly everything is going to hinge around ai, but for the telecom operator community, the drive towards autonomous networks as well as general automation is just a massive driver for their businesses, and Google Cloud has just unveiled its autonomous networks operating framework. Can you just give us a very quick overview of what that is and why you've just announced this, launched this into the market? Yeah, so we're
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (00:55):
Very, very excited about this. Listen, Google operates the largest private network in the world. We have nine services with over a billion users, but we do that at a fraction of the people that operate the network that even a regional Telco would have in North America. And that's because of all the autonomy that we've built into our network, A lot of the algorithms and the models that we're using to really drive autonomous networking, even in our own planet scale network. So what we're doing is providing a glimpse of our framework to our telecom partners who've been asking us over the years to help them on this journey. It includes a lot of our state-of-the-art infrastructure products like Spanner, BigQuery, but also it's the integration into the intelligence layer into our Vertex AI platform, which our model platform and graph neural network platforms and then into the enta layer with agent space. And these are where agents actually not only action, corrective action based on a root cause that can happen in the network, but they also get involved in workflows into other IT systems based on what might happen into the network. So it's a framework that will, it's phase one of a framework that we will continue to add to with algorithms and models over time. We have a robust partner ecosystem as part of this framework.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:25):
Yeah, I was going to say, because you've got this massive network as do the operators, you are doing the kind of stuff with your network that they would like to do, but you're not a telecom operator. Obviously Google has found out through Google Fiber that once you get into the telecom domain it can get a little bit more tricky, a little bit more difficult. But you have telecom industry partners to bring the domain expertise into this, don't you?
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (02:48):
Absolutely. So listen, we have a framework. We have a very prescriptive and opinionated point of view on this framework and how it should be deployed and architected in the network based on the use cases and the data that you want to come in. So we will have Google Cloud Consulting as part of this framework, which is I think a very strong key to this. However, we also have our strong partner ecosystem, Ericsson, Nokia, Amdocs are all building their autonomous network framework, using our framework as well. And we have folks like Capgemini, Accenture, et cetera, that are also engaging with us so that we can actually scale this out more globally
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:30):
Any more other than those three, obviously there's a big name,
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (03:33):
There's an ongoing list of key partners that are going to continue. There's the pro apps of the world, et cetera, that we continue to work with and we just ultimately need to help our customers in scale. So we're excited about it.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:47):
Okay. And how do you see this playing with the telecom operators? Because when you announce this quite rightly, and as one would expect, you've mentioned existing reference engagements, so with Deutsche Telecom, Telstra, bell, Canada, but these are sort of a specific parts of what you're offering as part of this framework. Nobody's gone, okay, I want everything you've got to do, everything we need. Do you see this kind of as here's our framework and this might suit you for this and this might suit you. So a patchwork, a jigsaw kind of thing.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (04:24):
So the way we always get started with customers is to prove out value. That's the number one thing we need to do. We're trying to solve problems for our partners. The reason why we're launching this today is because of the challenges generally that the telecom industry is under a lot of CapEx pressure, fragmented technology, declining arpu. So we're trying to really solve problems with them. So we're always proving out the use cases first. So as it relates to the autonomous network initiatives that we've had with some of these customers, we're identifying what's the one use case as an example that they really want to look at where we can really make strides as it relates to adding value. So for example, at Bell Canada, Deutsche Telecom, it was the RAN network. So we really built the pipeline, really looked at that one use case, and we proved out the value of the anomaly detection and the proactive maintenance that's required. Once you have that locked in with the pipeline and you have a framework in place, you can then start to extend it across other use cases like across the core network, across wifi experiences or what have you.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:30):
Okay. Now obviously there's a lot of boxes that are ticked here in what the telcos are looking for, but there's a few other things that specifically they're looking for now in terms of their cloud data AI strategies, and that's sovereignty. And I've chatted to a few people in the industry about this proposition and they say a lot of plus points there, but who's going to be interested in this framework outside of North America? Because Google will be able to offer that sort of sovereign position there, but not so much in other markets. So how do you address that question around sovereignty?
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (06:11):
I mean, we have partnerships with all global carriers where we're very diligent about meeting all sovereign requirements based on where we have our regions. We also have, outside of our regions, we have other sovereign solutions. We have a Google distributed cloud, which is an air gap solution that is completely sovereign and not even connected to cloud if that's the route that they want to go. We actually, if you wanted to do it in conjunction with cloud, we have our Google distributed cloud that now locally runs Gemini for local inferencing. So you can do a lot of that locally as well. And then ultimately the conversation is also about key management and who holds the keys to your data. So we allow our customers to bring and manage their data with their own keys on our platform. So sovereignty is not a clear cut, but so far we've been able to address a lot of the requirements with the flexibility that we have in our offerings.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:05):
Okay. So are you saying that any operator in any market that said, we like the look of this, but we want to keep all the data and do all of the processing in our geographic market so we can meet our national regulations and requirements? You can deliver that,
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:24):
Absolutely.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:25):
Okay. Alrighty. And the other thing, not only that...
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:27):
If I can add
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:27):
No, no, no, please do.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:28):
This is a huge area of opportunities for Telco themselves. We have a lot of enterprise organizations as sovereignty becomes part of national agendas.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:40):
Absolutely.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:40):
And telcos are very well positioned to actually offer sovereign solutions to their customers,
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:45):
Not for the first time they're well positioned to do something to drive new revenues.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:49):
But yeah, I mean they can offer the secure and compliance solutions across a nationally trusted infrastructure. We're doing that with in oat, their proximus sovereign cloud platform is actually based on Google Cloud's technology. So a lot of examples, Deutsche Telecom launched a so cloud with Google Cloud. So yes, we can address it, but more importantly, they have the opportunity to actually offer this to their own organizations.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:17):
That's the hope. And that's what a lot of them are working on and getting excited about. So hopefully something will come out of that for this industry. And the other thing that a lot of operators look at day on day and is really important is security in a lot of its aspects. And that includes redundancy, uptime, and every now and again, of course there are cloud outages. Doesn't happen too often, but it does happen. What kind of guarantees could Google give to telecom operators? That there is redundancy in the systems, even in these sovereign setups. That means that if they are running autonomous networks using Google's platform, that this will always be running, that it's beyond five nine's guaranteed.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (09:10):
So listen, the platforms that we have and the infrastructure we have, for example, a key part of the autonomous network framework is spanner. And Spanner is a state-of-the-art database that's perfectly suited for autonomous networking because it's really high throughput, it's low latency, it supports both graph and relational databases. So you really get a digital view of your multi-layered network and understanding. But also it's globally managed that scale with zero downtime. So we do work with our customers, we work with our partners to make sure that we're architecting this appropriately with the appropriate downtime and disaster recovery mechanisms in place.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:55):
But I asked that particular question. There was Google Cloud downtime last week that impacted customers including one of telecom TV suppliers actually. So we noticed it ourselves. So how does that,
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (10:08):
Well, the source of that outage wasn't necessarily the infrastructure itself, that was more at a management layer. So we always have to look at the source of the outage. I think we released the findings just yesterday, so we have a bit more clarity now on why that happened. Okay.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:25):
But are you able to provide guarantees that these kind of things wouldn't impact? Because if you've got autonomous network operations and they go down, then potentially you have millions of customers impacted.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (10:36):
Yeah, so ultimately I think customers always have to really look at the comfort level that they have, the guarantees that are in place and the architecture that's in place across all the hyperscalers and figure out an architecture that's best suited for them. And we're more than confident and happy to have that conversation with all our customers.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:56):
Okay. Alright. And so great to speak to you. Thanks very much for joining us today. Enjoy the show and look forward to catching up again in the future.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (11:03):
It's great being here. Thank you so much.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:04):
Thanks very much.
We are in Copenhagen for the TM four's, DTW Ignite 2025. I'm here with Angelo Libertucci. He's Global head of Industry for telecom at Google Cloud. Angelo, great to have you with us today. Thanks very much for joining Telecom tv.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (00:20):
Great to be here as well. Thank you so much for having me.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:22):
So one of the key themes here at this event is nearly everything is going to hinge around ai, but for the telecom operator community, the drive towards autonomous networks as well as general automation is just a massive driver for their businesses, and Google Cloud has just unveiled its autonomous networks operating framework. Can you just give us a very quick overview of what that is and why you've just announced this, launched this into the market? Yeah, so we're
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (00:55):
Very, very excited about this. Listen, Google operates the largest private network in the world. We have nine services with over a billion users, but we do that at a fraction of the people that operate the network that even a regional Telco would have in North America. And that's because of all the autonomy that we've built into our network, A lot of the algorithms and the models that we're using to really drive autonomous networking, even in our own planet scale network. So what we're doing is providing a glimpse of our framework to our telecom partners who've been asking us over the years to help them on this journey. It includes a lot of our state-of-the-art infrastructure products like Spanner, BigQuery, but also it's the integration into the intelligence layer into our Vertex AI platform, which our model platform and graph neural network platforms and then into the enta layer with agent space. And these are where agents actually not only action, corrective action based on a root cause that can happen in the network, but they also get involved in workflows into other IT systems based on what might happen into the network. So it's a framework that will, it's phase one of a framework that we will continue to add to with algorithms and models over time. We have a robust partner ecosystem as part of this framework.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:25):
Yeah, I was going to say, because you've got this massive network as do the operators, you are doing the kind of stuff with your network that they would like to do, but you're not a telecom operator. Obviously Google has found out through Google Fiber that once you get into the telecom domain it can get a little bit more tricky, a little bit more difficult. But you have telecom industry partners to bring the domain expertise into this, don't you?
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (02:48):
Absolutely. So listen, we have a framework. We have a very prescriptive and opinionated point of view on this framework and how it should be deployed and architected in the network based on the use cases and the data that you want to come in. So we will have Google Cloud Consulting as part of this framework, which is I think a very strong key to this. However, we also have our strong partner ecosystem, Ericsson, Nokia, Amdocs are all building their autonomous network framework, using our framework as well. And we have folks like Capgemini, Accenture, et cetera, that are also engaging with us so that we can actually scale this out more globally
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:30):
Any more other than those three, obviously there's a big name,
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (03:33):
There's an ongoing list of key partners that are going to continue. There's the pro apps of the world, et cetera, that we continue to work with and we just ultimately need to help our customers in scale. So we're excited about it.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:47):
Okay. And how do you see this playing with the telecom operators? Because when you announce this quite rightly, and as one would expect, you've mentioned existing reference engagements, so with Deutsche Telecom, Telstra, bell, Canada, but these are sort of a specific parts of what you're offering as part of this framework. Nobody's gone, okay, I want everything you've got to do, everything we need. Do you see this kind of as here's our framework and this might suit you for this and this might suit you. So a patchwork, a jigsaw kind of thing.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (04:24):
So the way we always get started with customers is to prove out value. That's the number one thing we need to do. We're trying to solve problems for our partners. The reason why we're launching this today is because of the challenges generally that the telecom industry is under a lot of CapEx pressure, fragmented technology, declining arpu. So we're trying to really solve problems with them. So we're always proving out the use cases first. So as it relates to the autonomous network initiatives that we've had with some of these customers, we're identifying what's the one use case as an example that they really want to look at where we can really make strides as it relates to adding value. So for example, at Bell Canada, Deutsche Telecom, it was the RAN network. So we really built the pipeline, really looked at that one use case, and we proved out the value of the anomaly detection and the proactive maintenance that's required. Once you have that locked in with the pipeline and you have a framework in place, you can then start to extend it across other use cases like across the core network, across wifi experiences or what have you.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:30):
Okay. Now obviously there's a lot of boxes that are ticked here in what the telcos are looking for, but there's a few other things that specifically they're looking for now in terms of their cloud data AI strategies, and that's sovereignty. And I've chatted to a few people in the industry about this proposition and they say a lot of plus points there, but who's going to be interested in this framework outside of North America? Because Google will be able to offer that sort of sovereign position there, but not so much in other markets. So how do you address that question around sovereignty?
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (06:11):
I mean, we have partnerships with all global carriers where we're very diligent about meeting all sovereign requirements based on where we have our regions. We also have, outside of our regions, we have other sovereign solutions. We have a Google distributed cloud, which is an air gap solution that is completely sovereign and not even connected to cloud if that's the route that they want to go. We actually, if you wanted to do it in conjunction with cloud, we have our Google distributed cloud that now locally runs Gemini for local inferencing. So you can do a lot of that locally as well. And then ultimately the conversation is also about key management and who holds the keys to your data. So we allow our customers to bring and manage their data with their own keys on our platform. So sovereignty is not a clear cut, but so far we've been able to address a lot of the requirements with the flexibility that we have in our offerings.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:05):
Okay. So are you saying that any operator in any market that said, we like the look of this, but we want to keep all the data and do all of the processing in our geographic market so we can meet our national regulations and requirements? You can deliver that,
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:24):
Absolutely.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:25):
Okay. Alrighty. And the other thing, not only that...
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:27):
If I can add
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:27):
No, no, no, please do.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:28):
This is a huge area of opportunities for Telco themselves. We have a lot of enterprise organizations as sovereignty becomes part of national agendas.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:40):
Absolutely.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:40):
And telcos are very well positioned to actually offer sovereign solutions to their customers,
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:45):
Not for the first time they're well positioned to do something to drive new revenues.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (07:49):
But yeah, I mean they can offer the secure and compliance solutions across a nationally trusted infrastructure. We're doing that with in oat, their proximus sovereign cloud platform is actually based on Google Cloud's technology. So a lot of examples, Deutsche Telecom launched a so cloud with Google Cloud. So yes, we can address it, but more importantly, they have the opportunity to actually offer this to their own organizations.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:17):
That's the hope. And that's what a lot of them are working on and getting excited about. So hopefully something will come out of that for this industry. And the other thing that a lot of operators look at day on day and is really important is security in a lot of its aspects. And that includes redundancy, uptime, and every now and again, of course there are cloud outages. Doesn't happen too often, but it does happen. What kind of guarantees could Google give to telecom operators? That there is redundancy in the systems, even in these sovereign setups. That means that if they are running autonomous networks using Google's platform, that this will always be running, that it's beyond five nine's guaranteed.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (09:10):
So listen, the platforms that we have and the infrastructure we have, for example, a key part of the autonomous network framework is spanner. And Spanner is a state-of-the-art database that's perfectly suited for autonomous networking because it's really high throughput, it's low latency, it supports both graph and relational databases. So you really get a digital view of your multi-layered network and understanding. But also it's globally managed that scale with zero downtime. So we do work with our customers, we work with our partners to make sure that we're architecting this appropriately with the appropriate downtime and disaster recovery mechanisms in place.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:55):
But I asked that particular question. There was Google Cloud downtime last week that impacted customers including one of telecom TV suppliers actually. So we noticed it ourselves. So how does that,
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (10:08):
Well, the source of that outage wasn't necessarily the infrastructure itself, that was more at a management layer. So we always have to look at the source of the outage. I think we released the findings just yesterday, so we have a bit more clarity now on why that happened. Okay.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:25):
But are you able to provide guarantees that these kind of things wouldn't impact? Because if you've got autonomous network operations and they go down, then potentially you have millions of customers impacted.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (10:36):
Yeah, so ultimately I think customers always have to really look at the comfort level that they have, the guarantees that are in place and the architecture that's in place across all the hyperscalers and figure out an architecture that's best suited for them. And we're more than confident and happy to have that conversation with all our customers.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:56):
Okay. Alright. And so great to speak to you. Thanks very much for joining us today. Enjoy the show and look forward to catching up again in the future.
Angelo Libertucci, Google Cloud (11:03):
It's great being here. Thank you so much.
Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:04):
Thanks very much.
Please note that video transcripts are provided for reference only – content may vary from the published video or contain inaccuracies.
Angelo Libertucci, Global Head of Industry, Telecom, Google Cloud
Angelo Libertucci, global head of industry for telecom at Google Cloud, discusses the hyperscaler’s recently unveiled Autonomous Network Operations framework and addresses the all-important issues of domain knowledge, sovereignty and cloud platform availability.
Recorded June 2025
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