What Is Open Telco AI? How GSMA’s New Initiative Could Fix AI for Telecom Operators

At MWC 2026 in Barcelona, the GSMA, the lobbying organisation for the mobile communications industry, launched Open Telco AI, a new industry initiative aimed at building AI models that actually work for telecom use cases. According to the GSMA, Open Telco AI is “a new portal designed to bring operators, vendors, researchers, and developers together with shared resources, datasets, tools, and benchmarking.”

Here’s what that means and why it matters.

Why Telecom AI Hasn’t Worked Well So Far

According to the GSMA, most frontier AI models still struggle with telecom-specific tasks. That includes:

• Interpreting complex network data
• Understanding telecom standards documentation
• Automating network operations with sufficient accuracy

GSMA Intelligence data shows only 16% of GenAI deployments in telecom are being used in network operations, highlighting the gap between AI hype and operational impact.

As GSMA’s Director of AI Technologies, Louis Powell, put it, “AI does not yet speak telco and operators are often deploying technology that cannot meet the required levels of accuracy, safety or efficiency. Establishing clear benchmarks and collaborating across the industry on datasets, models and agentic systems is essential.”