- Google is in the process of upgrading the entirety of its sprawling fiber network
- The goal is to achieve Level 5 autonomous operation by the end of this year
- AI agents - not humans - will be steering the ship
GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT, LAS VEGAS – Google is looking to go hands off when it comes to managing its 2 million-mile fiber backbone. Really, really hands off. As in Jesus-take-the-wheel, hands off. Except Jesus, in this case, is AI.
Muninder Sambi, Google Cloud’s VP and GM for Network and Security, told Fierce the company is in the process of upgrading its entire physical infrastructure as part of its quest to implement Level 5 automation in 2025.
He added upgrades will include the rollout of capabilities for exponential scalability, reliability beyond the traditional five nines, a digital twin copy of the network and new protective re-route (PRR) technology that Google came up with. PRR, he said, is what Google invented to replace MPLS and segment routing when it determined those technologies couldn’t stand up to the demands of AI.
Put it all together with AI agents at the wheel and pretty soon Google will have a Level 5 network. And yes, it’s the same network that’s underpinning its newly announced Cloud WAN offering. More on that here, by the way.
“We are going from automation to autonomous,” Sambi said. “We will have AI agents that run the network with no manual intervention. We will be equal to TM Forum [Level] 5 by the end of the year.”
Hands off my autonomous network
Level 5 is the highest on TM Forum’s autonomous networks maturity scale. The scale runs from manual management (Level 0) and basic automation (Level 1) to fully autonomous with minimal human intervention (Level 5).
According to TM Forum’s website, many telecom operators are striving to achieve Level 4 (a state of high autonomy) in 2025 as a strategic goal. A handful of entities have already achieved this milestone, with China Mobile and Tsinghua University leading the charge late last year. Vivo in Brazil followed suit in January 2025.
But Google, obviously, is pushing things a step further into Level 5 territory.
Running a Level 5 network
Sambi said every part of the network will be absolutely programmable, and AI agents will be in charge of everything from capacity planning and inventory systems to root cause analysis and ensuring network redundancy.
Back to the programmability and PRR points, Sambi said the network will be divided up into slices (or shards in Google speak). When AI agents detect an issue on one slice, they will be able to immediately take it out of service and failover to another slice with no impact to the customer application or experience. Additionally, Sambi said Google is diversifying vendors across its different network slices, so that if one vendor has an issue, it doesn’t impact the entire network.
At this stage in the game, it seems likely Google will be the first to achieve Level 5 network autonomy. We’ll be watching with a keen eye to see if any operators are able to follow suit.
Want more? Check out all our Google Cloud Next coverage here.