- Shifting from a telco to techco has been big talking point for telcos and hyperscalers alike for over 10 years
- Google Cloud says transformation is happening thanks to AI
- The hyperscaler is working with Mas Orange, Vodafone, DT, DigitalRoute, One New Zealand and Nokia’s network-as-code platform
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2026, BARCELONA — Google Cloud kicked off Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona with a series of announcements aimed at helping telcos with their journey to Level 4 and Level 5 automation. In their version of the story, AI can transform telcos by working side-by-side with humans to speed service delivery, help with customer service and smooth network automation.
Google Cloud is not alone in its vision for abundant uses for AI at Mobile World Congress. Ahead of the show, AWS and Nokia announced that Orange and du are trialing their agentic AI solution for 5G network slicing.
Amir Rao, AWS’ Director for Global Telco GTM and Solutions, told Fierce Network’s Diana Goovaerts before MWC that the deployments are “not production announcements,” but rather trials of capabilities that will be “eased into production.”
In Google Cloud’s case, it is working with a list of telcos on a variety of network automation projects, with the goal of getting to Level 4 and Level 5 automation, according to Angelo Libertucci, global head of telecom industry, for Google Cloud, who spoke with Fierce at MWC today.
The list of telcos includes Mas Orange, Vodafone, DT, DigitalRoute, One New Zealand and Nokia’s network-as-code platform.
Underlying data platform problem
Google Cloud’s focus is on tackling the telco’s underlying data platform, which “must be as dynamic as the network itself,” according to a company press release about the news.
“Over the last year, we’ve evolved our Cloud Spanner Graph and Vertex AI to handle the ‘dual nature’ of telcos: the need for high-speed, real-time response for alarm correlation, combined with deep, historical pattern detection,” the release said.
As part of the news, the hyperscaler is refining its platform to support autonomous operations using:
Digital twins – This may not be the digital twin you’re used to hearing about. Google Cloud says its network digital twin has evolved from a static map into a dynamic, temporal graph that represents the network’s live physical and logical state. "It captures real-time performance and fault conditions while allowing agents to query historical states — such as the network’s appearance five hours or days ago—to perform instant, accurate root-cause analysis," according to the announcement.
A unified graph data layer – This sounds complicated, but basically it means that Google Cloud is breaking down the silos between operational and analytical data by leveraging its Spanner Graph product for digital twins and federated graph analytics through BigQuery.
Realtime predictions – Operators can now train Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) on their network digital twin data in Vertex AI, and “then use the trained GNN models, along with Spanner’s ML.PREDICT capability and the real-time data in the network digital twin, to move from monitoring to predicting, mathematically tracking how a failure might propagate, and resolving it before it impacts subscribers," said the press release.
Transformation is happening
Shifting from a telco to techco and digital transformation in the telco have been big talking points for telcos and hyperscalers alike for over 10 years.
“Back then, we were talking about self-driving networks,” said Libertucci. “I never thought in my lifetime I would see that happen just because I knew the way [telcos] operate. There is no way that someone would make a change to the network without a human in the loop.”
Today, that is happening, he said. “It’s in production. DT is doing it. So, all I can say is that there are proof points that make me proud to work in this industry. I’m finally seeing the value that we were hoping to see — and it’s because of AI.”
Read all of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona here.