To understand Alphabet’s current potential from a telecom perspective, it helps to connect the dots. Picture GFiber as the backbone, with Gemini as the brain connected to Google Cloud’s nerve zones, tethered to an Android smartphone.

“If I summarize what the future might look like, the agentic era represents the greatest opportunity since the launch of the smartphone,” Angelo Libertucci, global head of industry for telecom at Google Cloud, told SDxCentral. “We're integrating Gemini across our entire stack here at Google Cloud, integrating that intelligence for telcos through the heart of their operation. And then we have Android and Pixel sitting in our consumers’ hands – we're enabling a single thread of intelligence. That's really what we're attempting to do. And with our telco partners, we're trying to make the network invisible, but the experience effortless for the everyday consumer.”

It’s a grandiose vision, and in the wake of this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) event, perhaps more grandiose than that of other hyperscalers. MWC 2026 saw partnerships announced with the big clouds, as one would expect, especially around agentic AI. But on-the-ground discussions with vendors and operators suggested these were more cases of customers using hyperscalers' agents as part of their existing cloud packages. This stands in contrast to genuine hand-in-hand and strategic relationships with the hyperscale brigade, at least from a purely AI perspective.

With telecom investment no chump change, there is skin in the game for the cloud giants, especially for Google as it aims to increase its market position. Arun Menon, principal analyst and GNI director and MTN Consulting, said the gap is closing between Google and Microsoft in terms of telecom-related hyperscaler revenues.

"Based on our estimates, Alphabet’s hyperscale telecom revenues reached about $3 billion in 2025, compared with roughly $3.85 billion for Microsoft and $4.2 billion for Amazon," Menon said. "The gap between Microsoft and Alphabet has narrowed significantly over the last two years, largely because Alphabet/Google is leaning heavily into AI-driven telco use cases and data platforms, which align closely with operators’ current priorities around automation and customer analytics."

Agents aplenty

On the agentic side, MWC saw Nokia partner with Google Cloud in an expansion of its Network-as-Code (NaC) telecom API ecosystem, with the latter’s agentic AI embedded into NaC through no-code integration. This venture was framed as helping operators maximize 5G investments and shift telecom away from network APIs associated with the likes of Ericsson's Vonage toward smarter, more programmable networks.

Among the Google agents highlighted by Nokia was one capable of requesting a dedicated network slice to assist multimodal AI inference from mobile device feeds, guaranteeing bandwidth availability from the very start of data transmission.

“We’re integrating Nokia’s network-as-code platform with our AI stack, so engineers can use natural language to tell the network what to do, prioritizing network resources for critical services like emergency response or health care, as an example,” Libertucci explained in a post-MWC briefing with this title.

The exec also highlighted other recent agentic deployments, including a trial with One New Zealand that saw Google deploy an agent for the operator that proactively managed voice quality by autonomously resolving IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) signaling issues.

Google is also working with Deutsche Telekom (DT) on Minder, a multi‑agentic system that predicts and resolves issues across multiple parts of the network simultaneously, extending automation beyond wireless radio access network (RAN). This release builds on last year’s RAN Guardian, a multi-agent platform designed to analyze RAN performance, identify anomalies, and autonomously initiate fixes. Data released by Google in time for MWC 2026 claimed that DT had seen a 95% reduction in network event management time.

In other words, we’re talking agents powering autonomous networks, another area in which Google announcements coincided with MWC: namely, a pilot project with MasOrange and NetAI to deliver GraphML-based AI operations, forming a digital twin of the network as powered by graph representations.

Echoing Nvidia views from Barcelona that digital twins are needed to engender human trust in agents, Libertucci highlighted the importance of simulation when tracking an agent’s recommended change to the network.

“I don't want to just push out the change into my provisioning system,” Libertucci argued, before highlighting Google Cloud’s Spanner, a globally distributed relational database designed to combine the consistency of traditional SQL databases with the massive scale and resilience inherent to cloud systems.

“Spanner has really become our secret sauce. It’s the only platform that’s tailor-made for digital twins. And when you want to get to the higher levels of autonomy, levels four and five, you need a digital twin,” Libertucci claimed.

From an analyst perspective, Menon described Google Cloud as particularly active in announcing AI-focused partnerships at MWC 2026, especially around AI and agentic applications.

"That activity reflects a broader shift we are seeing across hyperscalers: the opportunity in telecom is moving away from hosting network functions and toward AI platforms, data analytics, and automation of operations," Menon said. "These announcements reinforce Google’s strategy of positioning itself as a data and AI partner for telcos rather than focusing purely on infrastructure hosting."

Menon noted the pivot mirrors a strategic shift underway at Microsoft, which has stepped back from directly selling telecom network functions and is focusing more on platform and AI capabilities for operators.

Dawn of the agentic telco

For Libertucci, 2026 is the “beginning of a new era,” marking the dawn of what Google calls the agentic telco.

“This is where agents are running in the background constantly, and they’re providing context and orchestration across these business units that we’ve been working on individually," Libertucci said. "Now they’re going to orchestrate workflows across each of them, providing incremental value and levels of efficiency.”

This vision goes beyond agents into other areas of AI, for example, a DigitalRoute partnership helping turn noisy network data into clean, AI-ready inputs. Libertucci also staked a claim in 6G deployments, noting Gemini’s on-premises model is handy for the edge inferencing inherent to 5G’s successor.

Interestingly, MWC 2026 saw Apple – a telecom mainstay in the smartphone realm – debut a live demo with Ericsson of multi-radio access technology (RAT) spectrum sharing (MRSS) between 5G and 6G, suggesting the consumer tech giant is taking a more proactive approach to the backend when it comes to developing telecom standards.

Of course, with Apple powering iPhones and Google powering Pixel devices and any Android-based smartphones today, that perhaps puts the smartphone giants head-to-head somewhat, especially when it comes to “a single thread of intelligence” within the network.

“But generally they're not leveraging cloud, they just don't have that. And you know, they do run Gemini now,” Libertucci said, referring to this year’s news that Apple models will now be powered by none other than Google’s AI jewel in the crown.

So perhaps then Google is a telecom force to be reckoned with out of all the hyperscalers and Silicon Valley giants, with Libertucci highlighting Alphabet-driven prestige and opportunities.

“The last piece is monetization, as we’re beginning to leverage more [of] our Alphabet-wide relationships with our carriers to unlock new revenue," Libertucci explained. "There's no industry that leverages Alphabet more than the telco industry. So when you think about Pixel hardware, Android, Android TV, Google Ads, YouTube Premium partnerships, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to think about ways to make these experiences seamless from cloud through the network, right into the device and the experience that's in your hand. And these are the conversations that, I would say, are gaining momentum with our partners.”