The telco industry has long been plagued by sluggish software development cycles that stretch across months and years. But operators are now building and deploying AI-powered solutions in weeks using what Microsoft calls “hypervelocity engineering.”
In this episode, I’m talking with Robin Cole, vice president of engineering at Microsoft, who works with telcos on their biggest technical challenges. She explains how operators like AT&T, KT Corporation, and Telefónica are using Microsoft tools and methodology to speed development timelines and modernize operations.
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Robin Cole is an accomplished business development, marketing, and engineering program management executive with 25 years of experience in Fortune 100 companies and startups. Her professional experience includes Sony, where she managed worldwide strategy and business development for Sony Electronics and Sony Corporation; Apple, where she led program management efforts across the MacBook portfolio of products; and Microsoft, where she has held a number of marketing, business development, sales and program management leadership roles across a variety of products.
The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won a 2024 MarComm Award, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.
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Hypervelocity engineering is Microsoft’s AI-native application development methodology built on three components: small multidisciplinary teams with domain expertise (4-5 people instead of 8-10), solution accelerators that leverage best practices from over 140 AI solutions shipped in two years, and AI agents and tools integrated across the entire development workflow. This approach helps telcos compress software development cycles from years to weeks by treating AI as fundamental to the development process. Watch Robin discuss hypervelocity engineering at TM Forum’s DTW Ignite.
AT&T committed to Azure and Microsoft several years ago and is now using GitHub Copilot to accelerate AI application development in production. They’re exploring Azure AI Foundry to build specific agents for autonomous networks and investigating new revenue streams enabled by AI. Interestingly, AT&T improved operations and employee experiences significantly—it had built some solutions before Microsoft released certain products, demonstrating that it was ahead in envisioning AI applications for network operators. Read more in Microsoft’s blog, Microsoft AI ignites telecom innovation and growth.
These tools exist on opposite ends of the development spectrum. Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code/no-code environment with drag-and-drop functionality and a natural user interface, ideal for quick experimentation. Azure AI Foundry is a pro-code unified platform-as-a-service designed for custom AI development, featuring purpose-built and third-party models, experimentation frameworks, and SDKs. The key advantage of AI Foundry is its integrated backend with Azure services—compute, storage, databases, and APIs—allowing deployment with minimal keystrokes.
KT Corporation is building its entire software development capability on the Microsoft stack, including Copilot, GitHub, M365, Teams, and Azure AI. Its comprehensive strategy to accelerate AI innovation in Korea has three goals: build internal software development capabilities, partner with Microsoft to distribute solutions throughout South Korea, and innovate on top of the platform to generate new revenue streams. Similarly, Telefónica and Microsoft’s collaboration demonstrates how operators are co-developing digital solutions using innovative approaches like Open Gateway.
While powerful AI coding platforms like Cursor and Azure AI Foundry are horizontal tools applicable across industries, they lack telecom-specific context. Totogi’s BSS Magic provides the world’s most comprehensive telecom ontology based on TM Forum standards, understanding deep relationships between usage patterns, network quality, customer interactions, and competitive pricing. When BSS Magic sees “subscriber churn risk,” it automatically comprehends connections across the entire product portfolio.
Robin Cole explains that this spectrum represents the evolution of AI implementation in three stages. The first is cost optimization and streamlining existing processes. The second is automation, where self-directed agents take action with humans in the loop for oversight. The third is innovation, where organizations develop new business models and revenue streams with high-trust AI systems. The key is maintaining appropriate human oversight—AI augmentation keeps humans pressing buttons, while automation allows stepping back as confidence grows. Watch an example of AI in action as Microsoft Copilot interviews Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella.
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