By Mehnaz Yasmin and Harshita Mary Varghese
Oct 23 (Reuters) – Telecom giants AT&T and T-Mobile are investing to safeguard customer data and network infrastructure from new cybersecurity threats as AI integration ramps up, though fully autonomous networks remain years away, company executives told Reuters.
As AI agents automate workflows and data analysis, with declining human intervention, cybersecurity concerns are growing across industries over access to sensitive information and connected software.
For telecom operators, which manage vast amounts of customer data and critical communications infrastructure, vulnerabilities in AI systems or third-party software could extend from data breaches to network disruptions.
“Yes, we are increasing our investments in how we monitor and react,” T-Mobile’s Chief Technology Officer John Saw told the Reuters Global Markets Forum. The company simultaneously works with vendors to ensure security holes are closed as soon as possible, he added.
The Bellevue, Washington-based wireless carrier has suffered several data breaches, including incidents in 2021 and 2023, cumulatively impacting over 100 million customer accounts. It has agreed to various settlements with consumers and the Federal Communications Commission involving cybersecurity penalties and investments.
AT&T, meanwhile, warned that third-party software providers and AI agents pose cybersecurity risks that extend beyond operators’ own networks.
“There (are) industry problems, not things that AT&T can solve by itself,” CTO Jeremy Legg said, questioning if the open-source community followed comparable security standards.
The Texas-based company has deployed AI governance controls such as encryption, multi-factor authentication and human oversight of data access. It is also working to verify whether third-party AI agents seeking access to customer accounts are acting on behalf of legitimate customers, the company said.
AI has automated aspects of network management for telecom operators, but handing over entire networks to AI-driven autonomous systems is still “years away,” Legg said, as human intervention is still required to solve complex network problems.
For instance, AT&T has automated some tasks such as analyzing trouble tickets to identify potential fixes and, in some cases, automatically implementing repairs. T-Mobile, meanwhile, uses AI to automatically adjust cell-site antennas when nearby sites go down to compensate for coverage gaps.
During Winter Storm Fern in January, T-Mobile’s self-organizing network, or SON, restored coverage to about 66% of customers within an hour and 90% within eight hours, with most customers regaining service before power was restored, Saw said.
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(Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Divya Chowdhury and Joyjeet Das)
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