Industry
Communications, Media and Information Services
Connect. Curate. Comprehend: Unlocking Value Beyond Boundaries
Highlights
- The convergence of agentic AI, autonomous networks, data mesh, and next-generation infrastructure will move from ambitions and pilots to operational reality for the telecom industry.
- Operators who embrace this grounded in governance, productization, and workload-specific design, will lead the challenge toward a more connected, intelligent, and resilient communications landscape.
- CSPs that take a radical and transformative approach in tackling the challenges are likely to see better returns on their investment than those taking an incremental approach to the adoption of new technologies.
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From vision to goals
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.
CSPs strategies in 2026.
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).
- Global standards for telco metadata and cross domain ontologies.
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.
- Learnings from initiatives such as AI Telco troubleshooting challenge sponsored by GSMA will be followed, as domain agnostic semantic models are essential to arrest agent sprawls.
- Network API monetization – Shifting from portals to B2B workflows and gateways with a deeper partner ecosystem.
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.
- Designing and building secure, fit-for-purpose infrastructure for AI workload
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.
- Non-terrestrial networks (NTN) integrate into new OSS - assurance and planning.
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.
- Growing development of domain models and context engines.
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.
- Deliberate cultural shift.
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.
Future shaped by the CSP and not by AI.
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.
THE INDIA LENS
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.
- The Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) demands stringent governance.
- Sectoral regulators such as Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Insurance Regulated Development Authority of India (IRDAI), Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) are strengthening localisation requirements.
- Public services are increasingly adopting AI for welfare, defence, policing, and administration.
- Unprecedented scale of UPI, Aadhaar, DigiLocker, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), and other national digital infrastructure
- The push for Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), a regulatory body aims to create a unified global framework for AI, focusing on ethical AI, digital inclusion and leveraging AI for social benefit.
GLOBAL MOMENTUM
Around the world, we see a distinct pattern:
- Europe speaks sovereignty via General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Governance Act
- Middle Eastern nations are moving towards digitally sovereign architectures. China enforces strict containment across digital, ideological, technological, and informational aspects
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:
- From cloud-first to cloud-smart
- From data residency to data control
- From security frameworks to nationally compliant architectures
THE ROAD AHEAD
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.