The telecommunications industry is rapidly shifting from reactive, predictive AI toward self-optimizing, autonomous networks. To manage this shift from the core to the emerging edge, service providers require an open, common cloud-native foundation. Red Hat streamlines AI deployment across hybrid, multicloud, and edge environments by decoupling software from hardware, bridging existing data silos. By standardizing on right-sized AI, such as small language models (SLMs), telcos can run efficient operations even on resourceconstrained hardware while maintaining absolute data sovereignty.