Nokia and Microsoft integrate agentic AI for telecom network automation

Nokia and Microsoft just made telecom network management look a lot less like babysitting and a lot more like autopilot. The two companies announced a major expansion of their existing partnership on September 17, building a unified data foundation that integrates Nokia Data Suite with Microsoft Fabric to power autonomous network operations. The core promise: reducing data preparation time from weeks to minutes. What the integration actually does Nokia Data Suite handles the telecom-specific data ingestion and structuring. Microsoft Fabric provides the cloud-scale analytics and AI platform. Combining them creates what the companies are calling a unified data foundation, essentially a single environment where operators can query, analyze, and automate decisions across their entire network without spending weeks wrangling spreadsheets first. The initial use cases are focused on radio access network optimization, the part of a cellular network that connects your phone to the nearest tower. Two specific applications stand out: autonomous Voice over New Radio (VoNR) assurance and geo-experience analytics. VoNR is the 5G equivalent of voice calling, and autonomous assurance means the sys...