Why agentic operations could redefine growth for telecom operators

Details: STAFF WRITER; Category: Uncategorised; 03 July 2026; 22 views

For much of the past decade, telecom operators have searched for new growth by expanding connectivity, investing in faster networks and introducing new digital services. Yet despite those efforts, many continue to face familiar challenges: slowing subscriber growth, intense competition and increasing pressure to improve customer experience while controlling operational costs.

As artificial intelligence moves from experimentation to deployment, Eric Yang (pictured), President of Huawei Carrier Business, believes the industry is approaching another inflection point. But unlike previous technology cycles, the opportunity is not simply about making existing operations more efficient. Instead, it is about fundamentally changing how operators create value across the customer journey.

At Operation Transformation Forum (OTF2026), Yang described it as a new “revenue growth scaling law” for telecoms: Scale Out to serve more users, Scale Up to deliver more personalised service models, and Scale Fast to bring new services to market. Underpinning each objective is agentic AI, where autonomous AI agents are capable of making decisions, coordinating actions and continuously optimising operations with limited human intervention.

The concept reflects a broader shift already taking shape across the industry. AI is no longer confined to automating individual tasks or supporting customer service chatbots. Increasingly, operators are exploring how AI agents and human experts’ cooperation can improve everything from product design and network operations to customer retention and service assurance.

One of Huawei’s more striking observations is that operators’ addressable market is itself expanding. Traditionally, networks have served billions of human users. In the emerging AI era, they will also support potentially hundreds of billions of intelligent software agents acting on behalf of people, businesses and connected devices.

Whether that projection materialises at the scale Huawei anticipates, it points to an important reality: operators will increasingly be supporting autonomous interactions alongside traditional communications services. That creates opportunities to develop entirely new service models while placing greater demands on network intelligence and operational agility.

The company argues that this evolution requires operators to rethink every stage of the customer lifecycle, beginning with how services are sold.

Today’s telecom products often remain unnecessarily complex, requiring customers to navigate dozens of tariff options before finding one that meets their needs. Huawei believes AI agents can simplify that process by understanding customer intent and automatically recommending relevant products based on individual circumstances.

The commercial benefits could be significant. Huawei says agentic business support systems can reduce the time needed to launch new products from months to hours while also improving customer conversion rates. The company points to work with Thailand’s operator, where a major football match streaming package reached the market within a week and attracted more than 400,000 subscribers within three months.

Once customers are connected, the focus shifts from simply providing coverage to proactively delivering the best possible experience.

Rather than waiting for customers to report poor performance, Huawei envisages AI continuously monitoring network conditions, user behaviour and service quality before dynamically adjusting network resources in real time. The goal is to ensure users receive the experience they expect regardless of where they are or which application they are using.

The approach has already been tested across a range of scenarios. Huawei says its SmartCare Intelligence platform has reduced areas experiencing poor network quality by around 30% while improving Net Promoter Scores by between three and seven points. Elsewhere, the company worked with Hong Kong operator to support a concert attended by more than 110,000 people, delivering a 30% improvement in high-value customer experience, while its collaboration with an operator in the Philippines improved commuter experience scores by 35%.

The same philosophy extends to network assurance. Traditionally, operators have responded to faults only after customers begin experiencing problems. Agentic operations seek to reverse that model by identifying potential failures before they affect users and resolving issues automatically wherever possible.

Huawei says its AUTINOps platform combines AI agents with digital twins of live networks to predict faults, automate remediation and accelerate complaint resolution. In trials with Saudi operator , the company says more than 99% of customer complaints were resolved within 24 hours while customer satisfaction improved by 30%.

Perhaps the greatest long-term opportunity, however, lies in customer retention.

Most customers do not leave after a single poor experience. Instead, dissatisfaction builds gradually through repeated service issues, failed interactions or billing disputes. By analysing these signals collectively, Huawei believes AI agents can identify customers most at risk of leaving and trigger personalised retention measures before churn occurs. Early deployments with a Chinese operator reduced churn-related losses by 3.8%, according to the company.

Taken individually, each of these applications represents another step in telecoms’ ongoing digital transformation. Collectively, however, they suggest something more fundamental: a shift from reactive operations to intelligent, predictive and increasingly autonomous networks.

For operators facing slowing revenue growth, rising customer expectations and increasing operational complexity, the challenge is no longer simply deploying AI. It is determining how AI can reshape the entire customer journey to create new sources of value.

Huawei’s argument is that agentic operations offers a framework for doing exactly that, helping operators scale to new users, deliver more personalised experiences and bring innovative services to market faster. Whether the industry’s next phase of growth comes from more subscribers or smarter services may ultimately depend on how successfully operators embrace that transition.