Case study | Swisscom Reinvents Network Reliability with Agentic AI

TL;DR

Swisscom partnered with Outshift after a real outage exposed the limits of traditional lab testing. Together, they built a high‑fidelity network digital twin and an agentic validation workflow that can predict failures before deployment.
The system successfully surfaced the exact misconfiguration behind the incident. It now enables faster rollouts and fewer outages across Swisscom’s national network.

Industry

Telecommunications & Media

Company Size

23,000 employees

Solution

Internet of Agents

According to Gartner, over 80% of network problems are due to improper configuration and change management issues…: 72%

annual global cost of costs organizations over $400B annually: $400B

Swisscom, Switzerland's largest telecom provider with over 6 million mobile customers: 5 million +

Summary

Turning an outage into a blueprint for autonomy

Swisscom, the largest telecom provider in Switzerland, turned a major outage into a catalyst for transformation. After a subtle configuration error slipped past traditional testing and caused customer impact, Swisscom partnered with Outshift to rethink how network changes are validated. Together they built a multi‑agent validation pipeline powered by a Network Digital Twin and the Agentic Network Validator, enabling every change to be simulated, analyzed, and verified before deployment. In just four months, the system reproduced—and prevented—the exact outage, proving a new model for safer, faster, and more autonomous network operations.

Challenge

When traditional testing misses what matters

Swisscom experienced a significant service outage triggered by a small but complex configuration error that conventional lab testing failed to detect. The incident exposed the limitations of manual validation and static test environments, especially as networks grow more dynamic and distributed. Swisscom needed a way to understand dependencies, predict risks, and validate changes with far greater accuracy and automation—without slowing down innovation or increasing operational burden.

Outcome

Multi‑agent validation that catches failures first

Highlights

Reduction in change‑induced outages
Accelerated service rollout
Decreased operational costs

Swisscom partnered with Outshift to build a multi‑agent validation pipeline that uses a Network Digital Twin and the Agentic Network Validator to simulate every network change in a realistic, end‑to‑end environment. The system automatically analyzes dependencies, generates targeted test plans, and verifies expected outcomes before changes reach production.

During a four‑month proof of concept, the multi‑agent system successfully recreated the original outage scenario and prevented it from occurring again. This new approach enables Swisscom to deploy changes faster, reduce manual effort, and significantly lower the risk of service‑impacting failures—laying the foundation for predictive, autonomous network operations at scale.

At first, I was skeptical about achieving tangible results due to the project's tight timeline and ambitious scope. However, my doubts were quickly dispelled. Outshift’s Agentic Network Validator solution demonstrated its remarkable potential by analyzing real-world network changes, enabling it to predict and prevent errors before they occurred. This technology will change the way we operate networks, and the transformation will happen much more swiftly than I ever anticipated.
Martin Gysi, System Architect

Resources

BLOG

Swisscom and Outshift team up to build agentic AI-enabled networks

Read the latest insights from our engineering teams.

WHITEPAPER

Swisscom and Outshift team up to build agentic AI-enabled networks

When Swisscom's network engineers make changes to their infrastructure, they face a common challenge: How can you update systems that serve millions of customers without disrupting a service?

WHITEPAPER

Driving autonomous network operations: How Swisscom and Outshift by Cisco are redefining network reliability with AI agents

This whitepaper shows how Swisscom and Outshift by Cisco used AI agents and a high‑fidelity network digital twin to detect and prevent a real outage before deployment. It outlines the architecture, workflow, and business impact behind their move toward autonomous network operations.

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Turning an outage into a blueprint for autonomy

When traditional testing misses what matters

Multi‑agent validation that catches failures first

Resources

Swisscom and Outshift team up to build agentic AI-enabled networks

Swisscom and Outshift team up to build agentic AI-enabled networks

Driving autonomous network operations: How Swisscom and Outshift by Cisco are redefining network reliability with AI agents