- They will build a Technology Lab and develop Proof Points to test autonomous network concepts in real settings.
- Their work addresses fragmented data, multi-vendor complexity, intent translation, and trustworthy AI.
What happened: Telstra and Ericsson have struck a strategic collaboration
Telstra and Ericsson announced a new strategic partnership designed to advance the world’s move to autonomous networks. The agreement sets out two main pillars of cooperation: the creation of a Technology Lab, where new ideas can be designed and experimented with, and a series of Proof Points, which will validate those ideas in real network conditions.
Their partnership will address the fundamental issues of the network autonomy and include overcoming fragmented and siloed data, resolving the disconnect between business intent and network execution, handling complexity in multi-vendor, multi-domain environments, and ensuring trustworthiness in AI models.
To do this, they plan several streams of work:
- Advancing intent translation frameworks to turn business objectives into network actions.
- Building a knowledge plane—a layer combining data, reasoning, AI, to monitor and control the network intelligently.
- Embedding explainable, trustworthy AI so decision logic is transparent and interpretable.
- Catalysing industry transformation by sharing lessons, validating results, and promoting interoperability.
This is not Ericsson’s only autonomous initiative. In parallel, Ericsson has announced moves with AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., and it already works on autonomous networks in the Asia-Pacific region with partners like CelcomDigi (Malaysia).
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Why it’s important
Telecommunications networks are becoming more complex.They have to support 5G, edge computing, IoT, slicing, and dynamic services. Manual processes and inflexible rule-based automation are lagging. Autonomous networks promise to be more responsive, self-healing and efficient.
But there are real challenges in making that promise a practice. Data often lives in siloes. Business goals are hard to codify. Networks involve many vendors with diverse systems. AI decisions can be opaque. Without trust, operators will hesitate to let machines control critical infrastructure.
By building real testbeds (through the lab and proof points), Telstra and Ericsson intend to bridge the gap between concept and deployment. Their emphasis on explainable AI helps push trust further. Their willingness to share results may encourage industry alignment and interoperability.
If the work is successful, it could foster further adoption of autonomous operations over many operators globally. It could potentially lower costs, speed the launch of new services, reduce outages and enhance the user experience.
