Microsoft continued its telecom drive through an expanded 5G-based partnership with Tech Mahindra.

Building on top of an agentic AI telco venture announced earlier this year, the hyperscaler-consultancy duo will showcase an advanced network digital twin solution designed to modernize network architecture for operations, while bolstering service performance and monetization of next-generation 5G capabilities.

The twin integrates Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Fabric, and Azure Digital Twin with Microsoft's AI-centric Foundry, Fabric IQ, and agentic AI frameworks. The end result is claimed to “unify high-volume network telemetry into a real-time, AI-ready data estate capable of supporting advanced simulation and predictive modeling.”

Alessandra Antonelli, senior global director for strategy at Microsoft, commented that Tech Mahindra’s solution “brings real-time intelligence to even the most complex network environments … Operators can move from passive monitoring to active, intelligent decisioning, with agentic AI that reasons, simulates, and acts across live network environments in real time.”

“As telecom networks evolve to support increasingly sophisticated services and enterprise use cases, operators are under pressure to manage growing operational complexity while unlocking new sources of value from their infrastructure. Many continue to face challenges arising from reactive operational models, rising costs, and limited visibility into service performance, which can hinder scalability and the monetization of advanced 5G capabilities. Through our integration with Microsoft, we are combining digital twin technology, unified data intelligence, and agentic AI to help operators move toward autonomous network operations, improve service assurance, and create new opportunities for revenue growth through AI-driven network innovation,” added Amol Phadke, chief transformation officer, Tech Mahindra.

"Techco" Mahindra

While Tech Mahindra is arguably more known for providing IT services to telcos such as Telefónica Germany/O2 and AT&T, it has increased its "techco" operational reach with services for Vodafone and Australia’s Optus.

Its digital twin solution follows on from Nvidia banging the digital twin drum at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), with the chip giant arguing twins validate the impact of any proposed change from an AI agent before being implemented in an operator’s production environment.

AI agents colored Microsoft’s previous Tech Mahindra deal, in a post-MWC release from March of an ontology-driven agentic AI solution aiming to galvanize telecom data modernization. Powered by Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Foundry, the solution is also centered around agentic governance to support secure deployment of AI agents.

Microsoft, meanwhile, expands its hyperscale reach in the telco space while rivals like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud set out their stall.

Amazon most recently expanded its collaboration with Nokia to bring the Finnish vendor's autonomous network hub to AWS. The tie-up followed work from the duo on agentic AI-powered 5G-Advanced network slicing in a live 5G network, and the launch of a commercial mobile service on 5G core software-as-a-service (SaaS) for Belgium's Citymesh.

Hyperscale rival Google also deepened its Google love-in with an agentic AI suite designed for autonomous network operations.

That release follows Nokia's expansion from MWC of its Network-as-Code (NaC) telecom API ecosystem, with Google Cloud's agentic AI embedded into NaC through no-code integration.

These moves led Arun Menon, principal analyst and GNI director, and MTN Consulting to believe the gap is closing between Google Cloud 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."