Telecom has spent the last decade promising automation, but often delivering incremental improvements wrapped in buzzwords. According to Omdia’s latest report, Agentic AI: An Evolution with Transformative Potential for Telecom Operations, that era may be closing. Agentic AI—the class of systems capable of planning, reasoning, acting, and collaborating autonomously—is poised to become the beating heart of next-generation networks.
And Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are finally acknowledging it.
41% of CSPs say the biggest impact of Agentic AI will be in network management, not customer service. That single data point telegraphs a dramatic shift: the industry is preparing for AI that doesn’t just assist operators—it runs the network.
For telecom, that’s not hype. It’s survival.
Beyond Chatbots: Agentic AI Is Marching Into the Core
While 48% of CSPs expect customer experience to be the earliest win—because, frankly, it’s the lowest-risk place to experiment—operators quietly admit the real transformation lies elsewhere.
Roz Roseboro, Senior Principal Analyst at Omdia, put it sharply:
“The 41% of CSPs targeting network operations are signaling the real revolution… shifting agentic AI from a support tool to the core engine of the business.”
That core engine would carry out:
- Autonomous diagnostics
- Real-time optimization
- Automated fault resolution
- Self-healing network actions
If today’s telecom AI tools are the equivalent of a very smart assistant, Agentic AI is an operations manager that doesn’t sleep.
Why CSPs Want Agentic AI in Their Networks Now
The telecom business model is under pressure. Data demand is skyrocketing. 5G complexity is increasing. Edge and IoT workloads are proliferating. But headcount and OPEX are not scaling proportionally.
CSPs don’t want another dashboard. They want something that acts.
Agentic AI fits the bill because it can:
- Interpret huge volumes of telemetry in real time
- Coordinate across multi-vendor, multi-layer architecture
- Predict issues before SLAs break
- Automate repairs without human approval
- Optimize capacity as conditions shift
Think of it as SON (Self-Organizing Networks) on caffeine—with the reasoning abilities of LLMs layered on top.
But the transition won’t be reckless.
The report finds CSPs remain cautiously optimistic, choosing low-risk, high-governance use cases first. They want observability, explainability, and hard boundaries around what agents can and cannot do. In a sector defined by regulatory scrutiny, that caution is a feature, not a bug.
The Rise of Multi-Agent Telecom Architectures
The Omdia study highlights a key technical trend: networks are moving toward multi-agent architectures, where AI agents collaborate, negotiate, and divide tasks.
Two emerging protocols matter here:
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- A2A (Agent-to-Agent communication)
Together, these help vendors build interoperable AI ecosystems rather than locked-down silos. MCP and A2A act as connective tissue—allowing different vendors’ agents to exchange information, coordinate optimization strategies, and share responsibilities across layers of the network.
This is huge for telecom, where siloed systems have historically slowed automation. Omdia sees multi-agent systems as the foundation for:
- Vendor interoperability
- Horizontal automation
- Real-time orchestration
- Shared context across OSS, BSS, and NOC systems
If autonomous networks ever become mainstream, multi-agent collaboration will be the backbone.
The Vendor Landscape: Everyone Is Racing Toward Agentic Capabilities
Omdia names the major telecom IT providers already weaving Agentic AI into their platforms:
- Amdocs
- Ericsson
- Huawei
- Nokia
- Salesforce
- ServiceNow
Each vendor is approaching agentic capabilities differently—some through LLMs, others through AI-driven orchestration engines, and others by embedding autonomous decision frameworks into network management solutions.
But the common thread is unmistakable: automation isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s becoming product-defining.
When top-tier vendors start rearchitecting their platforms around agentic capabilities, the market is signaling a long-term direction of travel. CSPs will eventually expect agentic features by default, the same way they expect cloud-native architectures today.
What CSPs Should Do Next, According to Omdia
Omdia’s advice is pragmatic—telecom rarely jumps headfirst into anything unproven.
- Deploy out-of-the-box agentic solutions now.
Don’t wait for a “perfect” architecture; start with bounded use cases to build internal muscle. - Build in-house expertise to maintain control over data and models.
Operators that outsource too much risk losing strategic leverage. - Combine vendor tools with internal frameworks.
The future is hybrid, not vendor-locked. - Emphasize transparency, governance, and observability.
These are non-negotiable for autonomous operations. - Prioritize modularity and portability.
Telecom AI stacks will evolve fast; CSPs must avoid painting themselves into a corner.
There’s a subtle theme: start small, move fast, stay in control.
The Takeaway: Agentic AI Is Telecom’s Next Great Leap
Telecom hasn’t had a true architectural inflection point since the rise of 4G and virtualized networks. Agentic AI may be the next one.
Customer experience improvements will grab headlines first, but the foundational shift is happening deep inside the network. Autonomous fault resolution, self-optimizing infrastructure, and multi-agent coordination aren’t futuristic—they’re imminent.
The CSPs that lean in early will shape how the future of autonomous networks is defined. Those that hesitate risk watching their competitors’ networks literally run themselves.
And this time, AI won’t just analyze the network.
It’s going to run it.
Power Tomorrow’s Intelligence — Build It with TechEdgeAI
