Extension Proposal: experimental-ext-telecom for the Telecom Domain

## Abstract

This proposal introduces structured task metadata, event subscription, and multi-round negotiation patterns for multi-agent systems in telecommunication networks. The telecommunications industry is working on a set of specifications multi-agent architectures.

## Motivation

This extension aims to address the issue of mutual understanding between LLM-based autonomous agents when applying A2A to the telecom domain. Natural language cannot always guarantee mutual understanding between 2 agents; thus, we need a set of more formalized message payloads built on top of domain specific standard ontologies. Worth to read the paper "Why Do Multi-Agent LLM Systems Fail", University of Berkeley, 2025.

In telecom networks, the large range of technical skills, the real-time requirements, and the complexity of operations & maintenance tasks make the accuracy of these requirements even more critical, demanding a higher level of mutual understanding among agents.

| Category | Issues/Constraints | Requirements |
|----------|--------------------|--------------|
| Specification and System Design Issues | O&M tasks are complex and requires multiple highly specialized technical skills.

Task boundaries between agents must be clearly defined. | Structured Prompt to balance accurate interaction of the structured interface and the ambiguity task processing capability of the natural language. |
| Communication | O&M tasks require high-frequency real-time performance. | Efficient negotiation mechanisms are needed for interpreting network intents, assessing task feasibility, and handling resource conflicts.

LLMs are based on prior knowledge, while the network is changing in real time. Mechanisms are needed to report network events in real time to correct deviations during task execution. |
| Verification | High-risk operations must be reported for approval prior to execution to ensure operational correctness and goal alignment. | Mandatory human-in-the-loop flows must be enforced to comply with highly regulated environments. |

To fulfil these requirements, this proposal presents the following extensions to enhance the mutual understanding between agents at every layer of telecom architectures from the operations and maintenance tasks up to the business processes, thereby improving interaction efficiency, and reducing the risk surface associated with prompts & data related threats.
- Telecom-specific prompts & terminology: Provides structured prompts based on network tasks, transforming ambiguous natural language into structured, verifiable formats based on a network ontology, without the need to go back to strictly structured formats (e.g.: json, etc), to still allow to leverage on what LLMs offer about language processing, and instruction following skills.
- Multi-round task negotiation: Provides a set of well-defined negotiation mechanism, to avoid unbounded loops and reduce agent “chattiness” to communicate task intent, task feasibility, resource conflicts, and to support automatic information clarification/correction .
- Event subscription & notification: Provides a way to define the requirement for an event-driven asynchronous communication among the agents and between the agents and the telecom network events.

In comparison with the current A2A base protocol, the list of extended capabilities required for the telecommunications vertical domain is as follows:

| Requirement | A2A Core | A2A Extension for Telecom |
|-------------|----------|----------------|
| ICT-specific prompts & terminology | Gap | **StructuredPrompt** framework with telecom templates |
| Multi-round task negotiation | Only `INPUT_REQUIRED` for basic Q&A | **TelecomNegotiation** profile with 3 negotiation types |
| Event subscription & notification | Partial (push notifications). Based on updates of task’s state. | **TelecomNotification** profile with telecom event types and conditions. Based on updates of network’s states. |
| Cross-domain coordination | No domain concept | NetworkDomain, NetworkLayer enums, EnvironmentalInfo |
| Hybrid mode support | Missing method to formalize the mix in the message payload of natural language and formal standard formats | intent field with some standard |
| Agent registration & discovery | Supported (AgentCard) | Extended with TelecomAgentProfile metadata |

## Technical Approach

Three independent extension profiles, each activated via its own URI:

1. **TelecomTask** — Telecom task structuring with domain types, target objects, environmental context, constraints, and expected output format
2. **TelecomNotification** — Event subscription with telecom event subjects (incident, energy, performance, security, configuration) and threshold-based notification conditions
3. **TelecomNegotiation** — Multi-round negotiation supporting target clarification, feasibility assessment, and information supplementation

### Key Design Decisions
- All data in `metadata` maps (no core schema modifications)
- ProtoJSON serialization following ADR-001
- Multi-mode: natural language (as Structured Prompts) and structured intent
- Profile independence: agents may support any combination

## Implementation Status

Reference implementation will be available on GitHub
- A normative proto specification (a2a_telecom.proto)
- A python reference implementation with all three profiles (more languages to follow)
- A number of prompt templates
- Automated tests (unit + integration + interop + hybrid)
- Some scenario walkthroughs with wire format examples
- Some example agents

## Requested Outcome

Creation of `experimental-ext-telecom` repository under the `a2aproject` GitHub organization, following the [A2A Extension Governance](https://github.com/a2aproject/A2A/blob/main/docs/topics/extensions.md) framework.