Google adds to the autonomous networking noise

• Telcos are working their way towards autonomous network operations
• Many are building in-house teams to meet their strategic goals, but they will all need partners of some sort
• Google Cloud has pitched its Autonomous Network Operations framework into the mix
• But its proposition doesn’t fully address an increasingly important consideration for telcos – data sovereignty 

As telcos further adopt ‘horizontal’ cloud-native IT platforms and embrace the growing number of AI applications and resources that can help make them more efficient organisations, so their goal of achieving autonomous network operations starts to become more of a reality, as we heard during the recent DSP Leaders World Forum when industry executives discussed the topic during one of the AI-native telco sessions – see The AI-Native Telco: Improving efficiency and profitability through AI and automation.

A lot of the work to achieve autonomous networks will be undertaken by internal teams, especially at Tier 1 operators, but none can do everything themselves – they will need vendor, systems integration and often cloud platform partners to meet their goals. As a result, more companies are seeking to play a key role in enabling network automation for telcos. For example, Nvidia just unveiled its AI blueprint for telco network configuration, which aims to automate network optimisation processes and deliver significant savings to telcos.

The latest to position itself as an autonomous networking friend to the telco fraternity is Google Cloud, having just unveiled what it is calling its Autonomous Network Operations framework which, it claims, can help telcos “enhance service reliability, proactively detect and resolve network issues, and turn fragmented data into value”. The announcement comes just ahead of the TM Forum’s DTW Ignite event in Copenhagen, where the topics of telco AI and automation will be very high on the three-day agenda. 

You can read all about the hyperscaler’s proposition in this extensive blog authored by Angelo Libertucci, global head of industry and telecom at Google Cloud, and Muninder Sambi, VP, PM and GM for networking at Google Cloud. 

The basic pitch is that the framework “takes an AI-first approach, leveraging the latest in Google Cloud AI, infrastructure and analytics products to understand and make sense of complex network data, risks, and operations” and that the proposition “draws on Google’s extensive expertise in operating its own global network, which has leveraged AI at scale for more than 25 years and is one of the industry’s most advanced and resilient autonomous networks.”

That’s all true, and all very well, but Google Cloud isn’t a telco, so it won’t have the specific tools required for enabling autonomous telco networks, which is why the framework also includes “an extensive ecosystem to help deploy these solutions, including partners” as well as Google Cloud consulting services. That ecosystem, as you can see from the diagram above, includes Amdocs, Ericsson and Nokia, which all know a lot about telco network operations and “offer their own autonomous network solutions as comprehensive offerings built on the Autonomous Network Operations framework’s capabilities, enabling their customers to easily adopt and accelerate their journey toward network autonomy. These partners bring crucial expertise in handling diverse network data from various vendors, facilitating the creation of a unified data model,” note the blog’s authors.  

So this is essentially a broad range of capabilities pulled together under the umbrella ‘framework’ proposition and Google Cloud provides examples of how some telcos are “already transforming their operations and enhancing customer experiences with the Google Cloud AI, infrastructure and expertise provided in the Autonomous Network Operations framework”, though that doesn’t mean those operators are using everything offered as part of the framework. 

The examples include Deutsche Telekom, which deepened its relationship with Google Cloud earlier this year by striking an extended strategic partnership agreement with the hyperscaler that is built around data management and AI developments – see DT builds its ‘AI-first’ strategy on Google Cloud.

And specifically, DT and Google Cloud collaborated on the development of  RAN Guardian, a network AI agent designed to improve radio access network (RAN) operations: The agent, built using Gemini 2.0 in Vertex AI (Google Cloud’s unified developer platform), can “analyse network behaviour, detect performance issues, and implement corrective actions to improve network reliability, reduce operational costs and enhance customer experiences,” the telco noted earlier this year.

Bell Canada, meanwhile, used Autonomous Network Operations framework capabilities, “such as Spanner Graph to dynamically assess network relationships and changes in traffic and Google Cloud AI to identify and prioritise network issues before they escalate”, for the development of its AI Ops solution that, according to Google Cloud, has resulted in a 25% reduction in customer-generated reports and increased software delivery productivity by 75%. 

Australia’s Telstra, with which Google Cloud is “co-developing a new approach to optimising its radio access network (RAN) with an AI-powered agent” and Vodafone Group are also cited as existing users of the framework capabilities, while “customers such as MasOrange, Orange and Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) have also expressed interest,” according to the hyperscaler. 

Obviously, Google Cloud would love for telcos to use the entire offering to reach their autonomous network goals. 

That might be a leap too far for many operators, though, for a number of reasons. And the fact that Google Cloud just experienced an outage that affected a lot of customer operations is unfortunate and won’t help its case in the near term (but to be fair, such incidents are few and far between). 

More challenging will be the issue of data sovereignty, a topic that wasn’t referenced in the Google Cloud blog but is at the front and centre of telco data strategies right now for ongoing national, regional and broader geopolitical reasons. Can Google Cloud pitch its full Autonomous Network Operations framework to telcos outside of North America? Does it have the national and regional resources to offer the whole stack to an operator in Spain or Poland, India or Vietnam, Brazil or South Africa and meet regulatory requirements, such as those related to Europe’s GDPR?

Of course, as its agreement with Deutsche Telekom shows, it can provide a broad range of cloud and AI support to telcos and help them to develop applications, such as RAN Guardian, but a broader pitch on an international scale might be tricky.   

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV