Overview

Verizon is one of the world's leading telecommunications providers, delivering wireless, broadband, and enterprise network services to millions of consumers and businesses. Operating one of the nation's largest and most complex communications infrastructures, Verizon continually invests in advanced technologies that improve network reliability, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Supernova Award Category

Future of Work: Employee Experience

The Problem

Managing a modern telecommunications network requires millions of daily configuration changes, constant monitoring, and rapid response to outages and performance issues. Traditional rules-based automation relied heavily on manual engineering efforts and predefined workflows, limiting Verizon's ability to respond dynamically to unexpected network conditions while increasing operational costs and slowing resolution times.

The Solution

Verizon launched an AI-powered autonomous networking initiative designed to evolve beyond traditional automation toward cognitive network operations. Built on a common enterprise data layer, shared AI skills repository, and open model architecture, Verizon deployed AI agents powered by frontier language models to diagnose network conditions, optimize configurations, predict customer-impacting issues, and execute closed-loop automation while maintaining human oversight through governance, observability, and security controls.

The results

Verizon transformed network operations by enabling AI agents to autonomously execute millions of network configuration changes that previously required extensive manual intervention. The platform dramatically reduced outage response times, improved customer experience through proactive issue detection, increased engineering productivity, and lowered operating costs by reducing reliance on external vendors. The initiative establishes the foundation for Level 4 network autonomy, where AI systems continuously optimize network performance with minimal human intervention.

Metrics

• AI-powered closed-loop automation has executed more than 70 million network configurations. • Network outages that previously required 5–8 hours to resolve can now be reduced to mere seconds in certain scenarios. • 33,000 technology employees have access to Anthropic's Claude Code to accelerate software development and operational efficiency. • AI agents have eliminated thousands of labor hours previously required for manual network configuration changes. • Verizon has significantly reduced reliance on third-party engineering services, lowering external vendor spending through AI-driven automation. • Device-level telemetry enables proactive identification and resolution of network coverage and capacity issues before customers experience service degradation.

The Technology

• Autonomous Network Architecture • Artificial Intelligence (AI) • Agentic AI • Anthropic Claude • Claude Code • Closed-Loop Network Automation • Large Language Models (LLMs) • Common Enterprise Data Layer • AI Skills & Agent Repository • Device-Level Telemetry • Software-Defined Networking (SDN) • Predictive Network Analytics

Disruptive Factor

Verizon is redefining telecommunications operations by shifting from rules-based automation to AI-powered autonomous networks capable of reasoning, learning, and adapting to situations they were never explicitly programmed to handle. Rather than deploying isolated AI tools, Verizon created an enterprise architecture that combines shared data, reusable AI skills, and open-model interoperability to scale intelligence across the organization. By coupling autonomous decision-making with rigorous governance, human oversight, and cost management, Verizon demonstrates how enterprise AI can safely automate mission-critical infrastructure while improving both customer experience and operational efficiency. This initiative establishes a blueprint for the future of self-managing communications networks.

Shining Moment

Verizon's greatest achievement is demonstrating that AI can autonomously operate one of the world's most complex technology environments at enterprise scale. Executing more than 70 million automated network configurations while reducing outage resolution from hours to seconds illustrates how AI can move beyond assisting engineers to becoming a trusted operational partner. The initiative proves that autonomous infrastructure is no longer a future vision—it is delivering measurable business value today.