Google is preparing to step away from manual network management—entirely. The tech giant is pushing toward Level 5 automation, the highest level of autonomy in telecom networks, with AI taking the wheel of its sprawling 2 million-mile fiber backbone.
According to Muninder Sambi, VP and GM for Network and Security at Google Cloud, the company is currently overhauling its physical network infrastructure to support full automation by 2025. This transformation includes capabilities for exponential scalability, ultra-high reliability beyond traditional “five nines,” the development of a digital twin of the network, and a new innovation called Protective Re-route (PRR) technology.
Sambi explained that PRR is Google’s in-house replacement for legacy protocols like MPLS and segment routing, which the company found insufficient for the demands of AI-driven networking. PRR is designed to offer more dynamic and resilient routing, seamlessly adapting to issues in real-time.
These innovations are being implemented across the same backbone supporting Google’s new Cloud WAN service.
What Is Level 5 Network Automation?
Level 5 is the peak of the TM Forum’s autonomous network maturity model, representing a fully autonomous system that requires minimal to no human intervention. The scale ranges from Level 0 (fully manual) to Level 5 (fully autonomous). While many telecom operators are targeting Level 4—high autonomy—by 2025, only a few players like China Mobile, Tsinghua University, and Vivo (Brazil) have crossed that threshold so far.
Inside Google’s AI-Driven Network
Sambi noted that every element of the network will be fully programmable, with AI agents managing everything from capacity planning and inventory to root cause analysis and redundancy.
A key part of this transformation is network slicing—or “sharding,” as Google refers to it. The network will be divided into slices, and if AI detects a failure in one slice, it can instantly isolate and shift traffic to another, ensuring zero downtime or disruption to users. Google is also diversifying vendors across these slices, minimizing the risk of a single supplier failure affecting the broader network.
With its infrastructure overhaul well underway, Google appears poised to be the first company to reach true Level 5 network autonomy, setting a new industry benchmark for what AI-led telecom infrastructure can look like.
