Monetizing autonomous networks: Five priorities for CSPs
- As a communication service provider (CSP), you can use modern OSS/BSS to connect demand to delivery— launching faster, improving experiences, and turning network performance into value.
- What does greater network autonomy mean for your business? Explore five priorities drawn from STL Partners’ research.
Head of Solution Area Business and Operations Support Systems
Head of Solution Area Business and Operations Support Systems
Head of Solution Area Business and Operations Support Systems
Greater network autonomy does not automatically mean greater revenue. To turn performance into business value, you first need to address the OSS/BSS foundations and the barriers standing in your way.
The ambition is clear: The foundations need attention
The STL Partners report explores how strong OSS/BSS foundations help turn autonomous operations ambitions into business value.
“It’s important to know where you stand today, so you can paint a realistic picture of where you can go and what it will take to get there.”
North American fixed and mobile network CSP,
Source: STL Partners, Turning autonomous operations ambition into measurable business value, October 2026. Survey of 71 senior CSP decision makers, commissioned by Ericsson and AWS.
In the STL Partners survey, 58 percent of respondents identified legacy OSS/BSS systems and architecture as the leading barrier. Other challenges included artificial intelligence (AI) maturity and complexity, alongside data quality, availability, and fragmentation.
Figure 1: Autonomous networks: barriers and opportunities, Source: STL Partners autonomous networking survey, October 2026 (n=71)
Across diverse CSP environments, Ericsson has helped turn these opportunities into measurable outcomes.
Table 1: From insight to measurable business value
| STL Partners insights | Ericsson deployment results |
|---|---|
| 54% of respondents identified improved customer experience and reduced churn through proactive assurance as an OSS/BSS revenue opportunity. This shows how trusted data and timely insight improve efficiency and service outcomes. Source: STL Partners |
Across 25+ Tier-1 CSPs, Ericsson’s proactive assurance capabilities delivered up to 90% fewer care escalations and 60% faster complaint resolution Source: Ericsson |
| 52% highlighted the launch of new network-enabled services as an opportunity. Connecting design, ordering, and activation accelerates service delivery with fewer manual steps. Source: STL Partners |
Ericsson reduced service delivery from two months to 30 minutes, improved time to market by 30%, completed 5G slicing orders in minutes. Source: Ericsson |
Your next step is to connect network, service, and business operations, and prioritize automation where it delivers measurable value.
Five priorities provide a practical way forward
The following five priorities can help you connect network autonomy to measurable commercial outcomes.
Figure 2: Connecting data, AI, and automation to business outcomes
1. Build a real-time data foundation
Networks operate in real time, but decision data lags. Fragmented sources and batch processing slow responses. A modern data foundation closes these gaps by streaming and enriching events. It turns raw data into trusted information shared across network, service, and business systems. With trusted data, you can accelerate decisions, automation, and monetization while giving your AI dependable inputs.
2. Accelerate zero-touch product launches
Your commercial teams need to introduce offers quickly, but fragmented product information and manual decisions can delay your revenue. Zero-touch launches connect product design, deployment, and optimization. A governed enterprise catalog creates a consistent foundation across systems and channels, while AI and automation support creating, publishing, and improving offers. This helps you shorten the path from idea to offer, lower costs, and improve customer experience.
3. Protect customer experience proactively
When you discover service issues only after subscribers experience them, assurance becomes reactive. Trusted data and analytics identify problems earlier and assess their impact. Agentic AI supports root-cause and impact analysis, recommends responses, and enables corrective action. Telco knowledge, context, and guardrails guide agents through closed-loop assurance. The result is proactive customer experience protection and faster, consistent resolution as operations scale.
4. Resolve IT issues faster
Your operations teams may need to switch between tools and search across disconnected systems. Agentic AI brings documents, live data, insights, and automation into one workflow. Specialized agents retrieve knowledge, analyze data, diagnose issues, and coordinate responses, while operating within guardrails and escalating when human judgment is needed. This helps you resolve issues faster, reduce escalations, and lower costs.
5. Monetize service performance
To capture the full value of autonomy, you need to turn service performance into commercial returns. Operationalize by translating business intent into offers, policies, and automated actions. Protect with real-time insights that safeguard service levels and trigger corrective action. Monetize outcomes through charging, credits, and penalties. These capabilities connect what your customers buy with what the network delivers and how you charge.
Autonomous networks are moving from ambition to a practical source of business value
Start where your commercial impact is clearest: sell services faster, deliver stronger experiences, and get paid more effectively. Connect the OSS/BSS capabilities that make those outcomes repeatable, then scale autonomy around demonstrated results.
Read more
- Read this report on turning autonomous operations ambition into measurable business value
- Discover the industry perspective: From automation to autonomy
- Explore how Ericsson and Swisscom are building Switzerland’s autonomous network
- Learn how to realize the value of autonomous networks with charging and billing
- Learn how to turn autonomous networks into measurable outcomes
- OSS/BSS Solutions - Sell. Deliver. Get paid.
- OSS/BSS: bridging business and operations