Telecommunications is a complex field with proprietary data, making general AI models struggle to understand network operations. The industry requires extreme precision due to its massive scale, yet only a small percentage of AI is deployed on networks because of specialized knowledge gaps. Domain-specific AI models are essential for achieving the automation and workflows needed in the AI era, and open models offer the required flexibility. General frontier models lack the foundational context and understanding of specialized telecom vocabulary, topologies, and vendor data. Telco-specific models, trained on relevant datasets, can accurately interpret technical logs and diagnose network issues. The GSMA launched the Open Telco AI platform to build trusted, telco-grade AI, using Google's Gemma models as a foundation for AT&T's OTel models. These models were trained on specialized telco datasets curated by industry collaborators, resulting in numerous optimized models built with safety and reduced hallucinations in mind. AT&T's testing revealed that Gemma models performed exceptionally well after telecom-specific fine-tuning, with one Gemma model achieving high accuracy. These open telco models have seen significant downloads and outperform larger general models on specific benchmarks. Google Cloud is committed to supporting telecom operators in developing and deploying custom telco AI models, enabling accelerated AI adoption and safe deployment.