Telco transformation and the AI efficiency imperative

Interview

We caught up with Joaquim Croca, Senior Vice President at global engineering and technology company Cyient, to discuss the pressures facing telcos and their automation journey

For the most part, the 2020s have not been a kind to telco network operators, particularly in Europe. The start of the decade saw them racing to pour billions of euros into their new fibre and 5G networks, betting heavily on the ‘build it and they will come’ mantra made famous by the 1989 film Field of Dreams.

Unfortunately for telcos in 2025, the resulting environment has proven less a field of dreams than a quagmire.

Traditional revenues have remained relatively flat for years in both the fixed and mobile sectors, often bogged down by heavy-handed regulation and fierce competition. At the same time, new revenue streams at scale remain elusive, despite the vastly improved technical capabilities of these new networks.

Against this challenging backdrop, as Cyient’s Senior Vice President Joaquim Croca points out, operational efficiency has never been more important.

“Telco business is fighting not to get fully commoditized,” said Croca. “All of the operators are looking towards becoming more streamlined, more cost-efficient… It’s a matter of survival.”

AI: Unlocking efficiency

At the heart of this drive for efficiency is the rapid evolution of AI in recent years, enabling a level of automation previously unattainable. Today, advanced AI analytics can rapidly compile data from numerous siloes into actionable data points, pre-empting network incidents and triaging problems in real time. Meanwhile, specially designed AI agents can work alongside network engineers, responding to queries in plain language and autonomously making resolving issues.

“AI is no longer just a buzzword; it’s starting to prove its value,” said Croca. “The question of 2025 is really: how can I use AI to release human intelligence to go and do something else?”

“We have been using AI for many years, but now it’s at the forefront of conversations with our customers. They want to know how much AI we are bringing to help overcome their challenges,” he continued.

For Cyient, this concept of freeing engineers to perform more high value tasks is at the core of their VISMON™ platform, a suite of AI-driven tools that enable zero-touch, closed-loop network automation, from planning and deployment through to optimisation and operations. According to the company, this platform is already delivering reductions in network operation time and resources by up to 40% and saving engineers numerous hours every day through autonomous site management.

“Our VISMON platform has been around for 20 years, evolving alongside the industry,” said Croca. “We have a stream of AI-powered scripts that are looking at how the network is performing, what are the issues, what are the fake alerts… ensuring we only call in the network engineer when it’s absolutely necessary.”

Increasing market complexity

In addition to automating network operations directly, part of what makes AI-powered OSS so effective is the smoother integration of these networks within the wider telco operating environment.

In recent years, an increasingly popular monetisation strategy for telcos has been to spin off their infrastructure, aiming to offload some of the operational complexity and serving to attract fresh investment. This, the telcos argue, will allow them to streamline their service operations and better focus on their customers. However, as Croca highlights, this type of fragmentation is making the telco market even more complex.

“We’ve seen a major trend of operators splitting between infracos, netcos, surfcos, etc. It’s all driven by the financial incentive,” explained Croca. “But this approach also creates a more complicated ecosystem. In Europe there are dozens of operators, each of which can divide into two or three different entities, each with their own processes and relationships. It rapidly becomes a very complex world.”

Handling this complexity on an international scale requires careful data management, another area where AI can perform. In a partnership announced this summer, Vodafone is using VISMON for just this purpose, helping to harmonise its network operations across its numerous markets. The platform provides unified network visibility across Vodafone’s markets, enabling them to benchmark configurations, detect anomalies, and track deployments.

The benefits are significant. According to the partners, their collaboration is delivering a 70% reduction in time spent compiling cross-market reports and three times faster decision-making. They also expect to see a 50% decrease in errors caused by inconsistent configuration.

“VISMON provides the strategic foundation to oversee configuration data across all markets, enabling us to harmonize practices, identify best-performing setups, and optimize our networks more effectively than ever,” said Mostafa Noureldien, Manager, Network Development Digital Strategy at Vodafone in the company release.

“We are already deploying AI NOC (Network Operations Centre) agents and rollout agents across two of Vodafone’s operations,” added Croca. “These are fully autonomous and very intelligent. They bring a big gain not just in efficiency but in quality, in terms of First Time Right and First Time Resolved. We’re delivering much faster resolutions to network issues.”

The road towards fully autonomous networks

Of course, the long-term dream for telcos is full network autonomy, requiring the bare minimum of human oversight. For Croca, this goal remains firmly on the horizon due to challenges both technical and philosophical.

“We are still going through existential doubts around how much of the network and its operations can be handed over to AI. There are technical questions and regulatory questions to be addressed, so we will be handing over the reins gradually,” he explained.

Nonetheless, the industry is making blistering progress, with Croca highlighting the need for effective and agile leadership in this rapidly changing landscape.

“To succeed, you need to find the CEOs and CFOs that are really driving new ways of operating, as well as finding some evangelist CTOs that are very keen to look at things in a different perspective,” said Croca. “It’s not just about technological maturity, but our own mindset towards embracing it.”

Find out more about Cyient and the journey towards autonomous networks here

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Author: Ernestro Casas -

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