Agentic AI in telecoms: What is live now and coming next?

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Agentic AI is beginning to penetrate telco operations, but only in domains such as billing and field maintenance, which do not require real-time data or network operations. What will it take to enable secure and reliable use of agentic AI in more critical network operations?

Welcome to our ‘Coffee break reading’ series. These pieces are designed to be short and easy to read, presenting our opinion on a hot topic and challenging you to think about it too.

Introduction

For anyone in the telecom industry who attended MWC 2026 or followed the news from the event, it is clear that the telecom industry is hyper-focusing on adopting agentic AI to make work easier for their employees, improve interactions with customers and drive service innovation. In the words of BT’s chief security and networks officer, Howard Watson, ’the simple way I think about [agentic AI] is that means it’s AI that does stuff.’ So where is agentic AI actually doing ‘stuff’ for telcos?

To answer this question, we gathered 64 major announcements and demos on agentic AI from MWC 2026. This is the tip of the iceberg of activity in agentic AI in telecoms – AT&T has reportedly deployed more than 400 AI agents across its business and SK Telecom has more than 2,000 internal AI agents. So the demos and announcements at MWC 2026 showcase the cream of the crop, the things telcos and vendors feel best demonstrate their successes so far. Our analysis shows there are already a wide range of live deployments of agentic AI across network operations, customer operations and in B2B and B2C services, with a heavier focus on networks for trials and emerging technologies (see below).

Major announcements and demos of agentic AI at MWC 2026

Source: STL Partners

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Technologies and industry terms referenced include: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Amy Cameron

Author

Amy Cameron

Research Director

Amy works with world-leading operators and tech companies to define opportunities and strategies in the B2B and AI fields. She leads STL Partners’ research into application of AI in telecoms, as well as the Growing Enterprise Revenues research stream.

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