- AWS' Amir Rao says telcos need a broader vision to move from isolated automation projects to true domain-level network autonomy
- Progress toward autonomous networks remains uneven
- Rao argued real autonomy – and ROI – requires connecting many automated processes into a larger framework
Telcos have been on the network automation journey for years at this point. But the leap from automation to autonomy is a big one. One key hurdle to bridging that gap is the lack of a broader vision among telcos of how to go from process level automation to domain level autonomy, AWS Global Director for Telco Solutions Amir Rao told Fierce.
“What the industry is realizing is that we are solving one process at a time, and while this is absolutely the right way to do it, but there has to be a longer-term vision,” Rao said. “Otherwise, if we just make one process autonomous and the rest of 20 other processes still remain manual, we will not be able to deliver the ROI that our C-level and board is expecting from us by adopting AI.”
In other words, telcos need a roadmap not just to get to autonomous networks, but to plan out how all the piece parts they're automating will function in concert.
Where do things stand on the adoption curve?
Progress on the autonomous networks journey has been incremental at best and slower than hoped.
TMForum came out with its six-level network autonomy classification system in 2019, and in 2023, five operators committed to achieving Level 4 autonomous networks by 2025. Those operators were AIS, China Mobile, MTN Group, Orange and Telefonica.
Two years later, TMForum reported China Mobile was nearing Level 4 autonomy in multiple areas, including IP backhaul and RAN fault management while Telefónica Vivo achieved Level 4 in Network Creation and Planning. China Telecom, China Unicom, TDC NET and Rakuten Mobile have also marked Level 4 milestones.
But the broader state of autonomous networks today depends heavily on who you ask.
TMForum in April hailed a “significant change” in the pace of Level 4 validations toward the end of 2025 and into early 2026. It stated that while most operator networks today register between Levels 2 and 3, “some are moving rapidly towards Level 4 in certain domains." AI, it said, is helping drive change.
But just a month earlier, an Accenture survey found 79% of telcos are still at Level 0/Level 1 autonomy. Less than a quarter said they expect to reach Level 4 autonomy by 2030.
Pieces vs the whole puzzle
Rao said there seems to be some confusion in the market that gives the impression that Level 4 announcements always refer to holistic, domain-level automation rather than process-level advancements. And that, of course, isn’t the case.
“People are sometimes confusing the ultimate, complete autonomy across multiple processes with achieving more autonomy within the same processes,” he said.
Rao argued higher levels of autonomy – and the ROI it delivers – won’t come if only one out of 200 processes in a given domain is autonomous. Domain here means full segments like the radio network, core network, OSS/BSS and customer support. Each of these has tens or even hundreds of processes that need to be automated.
That’s why a broader vision of how these processes tie into a broader autonomous network framework is required, he said.
“Each process eventually in the fullness of time could actually be represented by an agent which is a micro agent. That that feeds into a macro, a domain-level agent. And that becomes a classical tree diagram,” Rao said.
“So, we need to have a vision of how we’re going to get to at least domain-level independence or autonomy and then multi-domain-level autonomy for us to really deliver the benefit to our respective shareholders,” he concluded.