An autonomous vehicle (AV) can include a communication system to communicate with a backend system, a sensor system to collect sensor data representing an operational environment of the AV, and a control system that can processes the sensor data to perform a localization operation to determine a location and an orientation of the AV within a given region, and autonomously operate the AV's acceleration, braking, and steering systems throughout the given region. Based on the localization operation, the AV can implement a set of configuration commands to configure the communication system to transmit and receive data with the backend system using one or more specified network nodes.