Google Cloud and Nokia announced its collaboration to integrate Nokia’s network capabilities to transform how developers and enterprises approach mobile networks.
Announced at MWC Barcelona, Nokia’s Network as Code (NaC) platform exposes mobile network capabilities through standardized APIs, allowing developers to access targeted telecom functions without directly operating network infrastructure.
This partnership aims to address the difficulties around using mobile network capabilities for software development and innovation, making telecom network functions more accessible, usable, and scalable for developers and enterprises.
Dr. Chathurangi Wickramasinghe, SVP, Magenta Business API, Deutsche Telekom, and an enterprise customer of Nokia, highlights the necessity of creating simplified experiences for developers to use mobile network functions.
“Unlocking a seamless, intuitive developer experience is critical to the growth of monetizable services that leverage the full power of programmable networks and network APIs,” she explained.
“Agentic AI framework, with agents providing the developer interface, provides the critical infrastructure to enable this experience.
“Nokia’s Network as Code platform, which is already integrated with Deutsche Telekom Network APIs, is a pioneer in enabling the transformation for programmable networks to the agentic world.”
The Growing Demand for Simplified Developer Access
Creating simplified experiences for developers using mobile networks has now become essential as network architectures grow more sophisticated, while many developers still rely on traditional approaches that do not account for telecom‑specific complexities.
Modern networks involve a vast array of protocols, features, and configurations that are often unfamiliar to developers outside the telecom domain, meaning software engineers would typically need specialized knowledge of network internals, infrastructure management, and operator‑specific systems.
Navigating complex telecom systems individually for each operator or region not only raises development costs but also slows experimentation and limits the pace at which innovative applications can be created.
Furthermore, many core network features are hidden behind these complex layers, meaning many potential use cases remain unexplored.
Complex systems can also lack accessible tools targeted toward general software developers, increasing onboarding times and stagnates ecosystem growth.
By implementing simplified developer experiences into telecoms, this lowers the barrier to using advanced mobile network functions, making network capabilities easier to understand, integrate, and scale.
Google Cloud and Nokia Integration
At Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Google Cloud announced its decision to integrate Nokia’s NaC platform with its own cloud and agentic AI capabilities.
Having previously partnered to offer Nokia’s network APIs on the Cloud marketplace, this latest collaboration allows developers and AI agents to access and automate advanced mobile network functions directly through Google Cloud.
This integration is designed to enable Cloud customers to develop network‑aware applications faster and to experience more seamless interactions with 4G and 5G services.
By strengthening Google Cloud’s position in the telecommunications industry, this will increase developer accessibility in building network‑aware applications, accelerate the adoption of cloud‑native and AI‑driven network services, and support operators in modernizing their infrastructure while creating new revenue streams.
This integration uses three layers to simplify developer access to network functions, enable automation of network tasks, as support secure, standardized communication between applications and telecom systems:
Exposure Layer
Operating solely with Nokia’s NaC, this layer converts complex network functions into simple, standardized APIs for Google Cloud marketplace customers to gain easy developer access.
Introducing accessible network capabilities allows developers to deploy reusable network functions across different applications and projects.
By reducing the need for manual network configuration, this layer allows both internal teams and external developers to use network features without complex telecom expertise.
Intelligence Layer
This layer utilizes Google Gemini’s AI models with NaC to interpret complex goals and automatically translate them into network actions.
From this, developers and AI agents can request outcomes while the AI handles the detailed configuration, freeing up telecom teams to focus on higher-level planning and optimization.
By introducing AI and automation into the integration, this reduces errors in complex and repetitive tasks and speeds up the deployment of network-aware applications.
Interaction Layer
This agent-to-agent layer provides developers with secure and standardized communication between business applications and network systems, ensuring that AI agents and applications can safely request and execute network changes.
This improves overall coordination between IT, network, and business systems, supporting multi-operator and multi-application use cases without needing manual intervention.
The interaction layer also enables scalable operations whilst maintaining security and regulatory requirements, ensuring data safety with advanced AI systems.
Improving Service Quality and Reliability
This integration can lead to more responsive, reliable, and personalized customer experiences in mobile networks.
Applications can now request network features such as higher service quality or optimized connectivity in alignment with real-time needs, ensuring end users experience fewer interruptions when the application consistently uses network intelligence.
This integration also ensures faster problem resolution, allowing operation teams and developers to easily access network insights and control through simple interfaces, shorten the time from diagnoses to issue resolution, such as dropped connections or poor throughput.
These applications are now becoming more context-aware, using provided information such as location and authentication signals to tailor customer interactions to their needs.
Services can now adjust content or functionality based on a user’s location or the strength of their connection, and can respond to detected congestion without manual intervention, leading to more relevant and timely user experiences.
Implementing standardized APIs and cloud integration ensures services behave consistently with company policies, regardless of the user’s location, ensuring similar behavior across different regions and devices.
By making network functions easier to use, automating optimizations with AI, and tying these into cloud‑native applications, the integration helps deliver more reliable, responsive, and tailored experiences to end users.
