At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Capacity’s senior content and insights manager, Saf Malik, sits down with industry leaders to explore the shift from network automation to truly autonomous telecom operations.

Joining the discussion are Igor Pais, Head of Products and Strategy for Unified Operations at Oracle Communications; Jean‑Louis Le Roux, Executive Vice President International Networks and CTIO at Orange Wholesale; and Colin Bannon, CTO at BT Business.

The conversation explores how telecom operators can move beyond traditional domain-level automation toward end-to-end autonomous operations powered by AI, cloud and modern OSS/BSS architectures. The panel discusses the importance of cross-domain integration, sovereign AI, and strong data foundations in enabling closed-loop operations and intent-driven networks.

They also examine where operators are already seeing returns from autonomy, such as incident management, capacity planning and energy optimisation, and why cultural and organisational change is just as critical as technology.

Looking ahead, the speakers share their perspectives on what will separate the industry leaders from the laggards: investment in programmable networks, AI-ready data architectures, and the ability to execute on a vision for intelligent, secure and resilient telecom operations.