Telecom operators are standardizing on open models for control and customization, with NVIDIA’s Nemotron 3 LTM leading the charge for network automation and incident triage.

TELECOM SHIFT Open models are now the backbone of telecom AI. NVIDIA’s State of AI in Telecommunications report shows 89% of operators call open source models important to their strategy. The reasons are control, trust, and customization across critical workloads: autonomous networks, customer care, and edge deployments. NEW CAPABILITY Nemotron 3 LTM is a 30-billion-parameter model fine-tuned on telecom datasets. It targets network configuration and customer incident triage. SoftBank and Indosat are already using it, with NVIDIA providing end-to-end NeMo recipes for operator-specific tuning. Open weights and recipes enable telecom-specific governance, deployment across clouds, private infrastructure, and edge environments. ROI AND INVESTMENT 90% of telcos report AI is increasing revenue and cutting costs. Network automation is the leading use case, with 77% expecting AI-native networks before 6G. Budgets are rising: 89% plan to boost AI spending in 2026, up from 65% last year. RISKS AND REQUIREMENTS Open models alone are not enough. Safe autonomous operations require protected data pipelines, governance, orchestration, secure runtimes, and simulation. Fine-tuning demands anonymized or synthetic datasets. Model choice adds complexity, as each workload must balance performance, cost, and control. NORDIC IMPLICATION This is a signal for Nordic builders. Open models are maturing for verticals. The telecom playbook, control, customization, and governance, is a template for other industries. The network must decide: do we adopt this stack, or build our own?

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