Telcos have spent years automating their networks, but most of that automation is rigid. It makes the same decision every time—whether the device is offline, whether it's a maintenance window, whether there's a weather event. Adding AI agents sounds like progress, but if those agents aren't built on a deterministic foundation, you're not removing risk, you're accelerating it. The real challenge isn't getting AI to answer questions about your network. It's getting it to act safely.

For this episode, I'm joined by Chris Wade, Co-Founder and CTO of Itential, a network automation platform that's been making infrastructure programmable since 2014. We dig into how Itential is using agentic AI on live production networks, why it layers AI reasoning on top of deterministic guardrails, and how Lumen scaled from 16 to 350 automated workflows by putting field engineers in the driver's seat.

Listen now to hear:

Why deterministic guardrails are essential when AI agents touch live networks [04:14];
The "secret sauce" for giving AI agents real business context [06:24];
How Lumen grew from 16 to 350+ automated workflows [11:24]; and
What telcos need to demand from vendors [13:05].

Links and Resources:

Learn more about Itential and its agentic network automation platform, FlowAI.
Check out Itential's MCP server, launched in May 2024—one of the earliest in the telco space.
Watch Greg Freeman from Lumen present at AutoCon on how his team scaled from 16 to 350+ automated workflows on Itential's platform.
Take a look at Aaron Levie's blog, Building for Trillions of Agents. The Box CEO argues that agents will become the primary users of all software, and if your systems can't be accessed through an open API or CLI, they're invisible to AI. It's the exact problem we unpack in this episode.
Learn how the Totogi Ontology gives AI agents the business context they need to act on live systems and lets operators see exactly why every decision was made and make changes on the spot.
Read my blog, The Promise of AI is No UI, written back in 2024. It predicted exactly where this conversation was headed: a world where AI agents are the primary users of software.
Watch this scene from Silicon Valley—one of the best shows ever made about startups—where Dinesh interacts with an AI version of Gilfoyle. It aired back in 2019, before any of us knew this would be real. If you think agentic AI is a new idea, think again!
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.

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This week’s guest:

Chris Wade co-founded Itential in 2014 to simplify and accelerate the adoption of network automation and to transform network operations practices. Using a model-based approach, Chris led the innovation and development of the company’s flagship portfolio of dynamic, multi-tiered network automation applications. Prior to establishing Itential, Chris gained a wealth of experience in the SDN, NFV and OSS/BSS markets having led initiatives in this space for global organizations including Alcatel-Lucent, ReachView Technologies and Micromuse.

Podcast Credits:

Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
Music: Dyami Wilson

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Ep 138 - From programmable networks to agentic AI (Chris Wade)