Highlights
Communication service providers (CSPs) are sharpening their focus and strategy in an endeavor to find their purpose and position in the global economy.
As agentic AI platforms move from choice to necessity, differentiation will depend on how each CSP builds a secure and trustworthy architecture grounded in its context, regulatory requirements, and internal baselines. Technology partners who know their legacy environments and have a vision of the future are the best bet to navigate CSPs’ strategic transformation programs.
CSPs that take a radical and transformative approach in tackling the higher order of challenges in the realm of designing and operating secure and trustworthy agents, data ontologies and designs that are bounded by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and narrow domain boundaries are likely to see better returns on their investment than those taking an incremental approach to the adoption of new technologies.
A new approach to technology risk management is emerging that will differentiate the leaders from the followers.
Successful CSPs will control how they will use technology to shape their future.
As AI architectures and autonomous platform designs scale up from use-case oriented pilots to capability centric production, features such as knowledge planes, context models, intent-driven orchestration, and end-to-end auditability for trustworthy agents will underpin this evolution.
Operators will industrialize and standardize their AIOps and MLOps practices, leveraging industry pools of experience from SDO initiatives such as TM Forum’s AI-native blueprints to bridge tooling, data contracts, and control loops across IT and network domains.
While agentic AI-based approaches for revenue assurance and billing anomaly management are being actively explored, subscriber fraud and mule networks pose a threat to the CSPs. The same technology features of AI can potentially be deployed by both the developers and hackers.
As agentic AI becomes central to telecom operations, governance, risk and compliance (GRC), and security have become agenda items from the boardroom to the NOC ( Network Operations Center).
The past narrative on data-driven organizations and “data ready for AI” will evolve; from boundary driven data architecture and design patterns to complete run-time discipline of data models through the lifecycle, pervasive across the organization and partner ecosystem.
As global meta data platforms and concepts of data commons gain ground universally, CSPs are investing in efforts towards advanced metadata and ontology management to support AI technologies.
Monetization of network APIs will increasingly be embedded into B2B2X workflows. The focus will shift to productizing API by defining pricing, SLAs, and assurance telemetry; and, targeting industry-specific outcomes such as IOT/OT (industrial AI), media, logistics through a deeper partner ecosystem that is closer to the customer than OEM-CSP alliances such as Aduna.
The new data center designs with adoption of flat high-radix topologies, RDMA/RoCE/InfiniBand, and GPU-aware protocols have not yet materialized.
However, they will evolve as sovereign clouds and AI factories onboard industry-specific workload patterns.
NTN and multi-orbit satellite communications will become integral to cross-domain OSS, supporting backhaul resilience, rural coverage, and mobility corridors. Operators will initiate designs for NTN-aware assurance, predictive degradation windows, and dynamic multi-access edge placement.
Telecom operators are shifting from generic AI models to smaller, telecom‑specific domain models that understand network topology, SLAs, and OSS/BSS processes. These models improve prediction, troubleshooting, and automation. Context engines strengthen this by giving real‑time network and policy information, helping AI act safely and accurately. By 2026, operators will be judged by the strength of these models not the number of AI tools they use.
Real AI adoption in telecom needs a clear cultural shift, not just new tools. Operators must encourage safe experimentation, rely more on data driven decisions, and form cross functional teams that own AI enabled services end to end. Trust in AI will grow through transparent models and human oversight, supported by ongoing upskilling and new AI focused roles.
The traditional technology adoption patterns of CSPs have been disrupted by AI.
The stereotypes of technology adoption behaviors of enterprises—such as risk leaders (early adopters), fast followers and the in-between variants is also getting disrupted, creating a level playing fields with opportunities to shed handicaps.
The difference between leaders and laggards will lie in those who focus on execution over strategy, overhauling teamwork and partner engagement over traditional sourcing and procurement of solution and services and most importantly those who develop a new approach to risk management in their AI-led business and operating model transformation.
India is standing at a pivotal point where its digital economy, citizen services, and enterprise ecosystems are expanding faster than global benchmarks. Regulations across multiple domains are becoming sharper.
Around the world, we see a distinct pattern:
What does the strategic compass indicate?
In India’s “my data, my cloud, my rules” era, enterprises must move beyond infrastructure to embrace digital governance, policy alignment, and responsible AI, as data becomes a geo-strategic asset.
The shift is clear:
Sovereignty is a crucial part of the current digital era. For India, it is important to stay deeply connected to global innovations while maintaining focus on robust data protection frameworks. This balanced approach keeps us strong at home and cooperative with foreign countries.
Enterprises and government entities need to assess their sovereign cloud maturity and align their strategies accordingly. They should focus on investing in sovereign cloud while collaborating globally to adopt best practices and promote co-creation. By investing in IT sovereignty, enterprises build a trusted IT infrastructure that can drive security and innovation, giving them an edge in the race.