- T-Mobile says AI is helping its network react faster when disaster strikes – from rerouting capacity to preserving power and deploying assets more efficiently
- CTO John Saw said tools like Dynamic CX allow T-Mobile’s self-organizing network to make changes faster than human engineers could do manually
- T-Mobile is using National Preparedness Month to highlight how AI is becoming part of its disaster-response playbook
If you’ve been around the telco industry for more than a few minutes, you’re familiar with Self-Organizing Network (SON) technology, which continuously monitors and optimizes network performance. The technology allows operators to digitally adapt antennas on the fly, without sending engineers out to manually adjust equipment.
T-Mobile recently enhanced its SON capabilities, allowing it to run even more autonomously, with trials showing it can make adjustments almost 60% faster, according to T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer John Saw.
On top of that, it uses Dynamic CX, which taps AI to ratchet up SON a few notches. As T-Mobile Chief Network Officer Ankur Kapoor told Fierce this past summer, Dynamic CX – short for “customer experience” – helps anticipate demands and prepares the network for increased traffic in real time.
There’s an interesting back story to Dynamic CX. Some events, like professional football games or concerts, are well-publicized and crowds are to be expected. But there are many smaller events occurring every day – high school football games or neighborhood watch parties – where people are gathering and traffic spikes.
Kapoor offered an example where his own daughter was attending a college festival where hundreds of people were due to show up. It was one of those things that he wouldn't have known about unless someone in his own family was attending.
That's the kind of event his team sought to find in public databases and online schedules so that they could create their own in-house calendar and be prepared for out-of-the-ordinary network demands.
They ended up compiling a list of more than 40,000 of these types of events occurring in the U.S. throughout the year that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. Thanks to the database, they can anticipate and prepare for these less publicized events.
On a wider scale, Dynamic CX proved itself during the 2026 World Cup, where T-Mobile used it to provide more capacity before events – think fan fests – that triggered heavier-than-normal demand, thereby reacting faster than if they were relying solely on SON.
“The AI can actually look and say, ‘Hey, there’s a fan fest happening for the U.S.-Australia match at Pioneer Square starting at 11 a.m. It automatically adapts the capacity to make sure that all sites there are ready for high-capacity usage and it changes the settings when the fans go home,” Saw explained. “We can use Dynamic CX for disasters as well.”
Dynamic CX and hurricane season
Behind the scenes, T-Mobile’s network is using the data to make changes in the way antennas are tilted, for example, so they’re constantly adapting to network demands. Five years ago, that wasn’t even possible.
Today, “when we know there’s a storm coming or God forbid, a hurricane, we can use tools like Dynamic CX to actually allow our network to adapt to changing conditions faster than just human engineers can,” Saw said.
“By the time I get human engineers in the loop, it’s going to take a while to do all. But with AI, I’m able to make my self-organizing network organize a lot faster and now, especially with new capabilities … I can do it autonomously without a lot of manual intervention,” Saw said.
In addition, “I only need to use the power that I need to make sure our customers can stay connected. It has been a big lift and it allows me to use all our physical assets – whether it’s generators, COWs, COLTs – to the best possible extent,” he said.
Like rivals AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile has a lot of experience reacting to natural and man-made disasters. They’ve all built up a cadre of cell sites on wheels (COWs), cell on light trucks (COLTs), satellite COWs and COLTs and more. It’s become rather routine, but now with AI, they’re able to do more with the physical assets they have on hand.
Why now?
T-Mobile’s technology team has a lot on its plate, maintaining its network in the 5G era and preparing for AI-RAN and 6G.
Why talk about this now?
The answer is simple. It’s National Preparedness Month. “We want to get the word out there that we have our customers’ backs in the event of natural disasters,” Saw said. “We also want our customers and investors to know that we’re well prepared for whatever disasters could be hitting us.”
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