DTW24-Ignite: Catalyst award winners tackle industry challenges and pave way to growth

TM Forum announced the winners of this year’s Catalyst Awards during the Innovation Awards Ceremony at DTW24 – Ignite in Copenhagen last week, celebrating the power of collaboration to develop innovation solutions to common industry challenges. 

The Catalyst program enables people from different companies to co-create and work together to find new ways to drive business efficiency, better user experiences and sustainable growth for communication service providers (CSPs) and their technology partners.

In 2024, there were 50 Catalyst teams working on solutions and creating proof of concepts. 

Each year, TM Forum recognizes the most outstanding projects among the Open Innovation Catalysts and Moonshot Catalysts. This year, there were eight award categories for Open Innovation and four categories for Moonshots. 

The winners were chosen by an independent panel of judges from global member organizations who reviewed and judged the projects against a specific set of criteria. 

The following highlights the work of the winning teams. The full list of winners and finalists can be found here.

The Open Innovation Catalyst winners for 2024:

Category: Business Impact

Winner: Harnessing GenAI’s business value for operations transformation

This Catalyst sets out to transform operations and maintenance (O&M) for communications service providers (CSPs) by boosting efficiency and network quality through artificial intelligence (AI). The use of closed-loop automation enhances network quality through streamlined O&M. The project employs TM Forum’s recently defined autonomous operations value streams too simplify CSP operations and management processes. 

Category: Innovative & Futuristic

Winner: GenAI empowers computing force network

As demand for computing power increases, these resources need to be allocated efficiently. To streamline the use of computing power and network resources, it is essential to align customers' original intentions with the capabilities and services of the computing network. This Catalyst aims to provide an intent-based computing resource service supported by generative AI (genAI) and automation. Through intelligent detection of resource requirements, it will allocate computing resources accordingly to ensure optimal efficiency and user satisfaction.

Winner: SATCOM + 5G anywhere – Phase II

This Catalyst addresses the convergence of 5G and satellite communication networks from the perspective of OSS/BSS and network management. The solution builds on TM Forum’s Connectivity as a Service paradigm to integrate telco and satcom customer facing services (CFSs) into a single core commerce layer followed by intent-driven automation of the order-to-activation process.

Category: Use of TM Forum Assets

Winner: GenAI powered toolkit for network & service management

The solution shows how to audit network resources in a fraction of the time using large language models (LLMs). The LLM draws on the TM Forum’s business process framework and information reference model principles (such as ETOM/SID). The TM Forum assets act as guardrails, supplemented by preventive tests for hallucination, following a significant pre-training process. The goal is to enhance customer experience by lowering the time needed to provision a service and eventually enable autonomous network and service orchestration. 

Category: Rising Star

Winner: AI for customer perception network optimization

This Catalyst aims to anticipate customer pain points through AI-led digital twin and explores how CSPs can move to a perception-centric approach to wireless network optimization. By employing advanced AI, the Catalyst seeks to strengthen the effective transmission of customers’ real experiences, such as video lag, resolution and first frame delay, to network operations. By better coordinating the perception, business and network layers, the goal is to create a quality optimization system centered on customer perception. 

Category: Application of AI & automation

Winner: Realtime intelligent customer experiences

To remain competitive and drive growth, telcos need to innovate and enhance customer experiences. This Catalyst aims to showcase how AI and automation, combined with telco data, can enable personalized experiences and boost digital revenue. The project unifies data, AI and automation to deliver telco growth.

Winner: Harnessing GenAI’s business value for operations transformation

This Catalyst sets out to transform operations and maintenance (O&M) for communications service providers (CSPs) by boosting efficiency and network quality through artificial intelligence (AI). The use of closed-loop automation enhances network quality through streamlined O&M. The project employs TM Forum’s recently defined autonomous operations value streams too simplify CSP operations and management processes. 

Category: Beyond Telco

Winner: Autonomous networks hyperloops – Phase V – virtual command center as a service

This Catalyst, now in its fifth phase, is developing a disaster-handling virtual command center (VCC). It is a virtual environment that increases operational efficiency and situational awareness and enhances decision-making for emergency services. It combines AI with autonomous networks and digital twins in a single interface to provide a comprehensive real-time view of operations, assets and infrastructure.

Category: Tech for Good

Winner: SATCOM + 5G anywhere – Phase II

This Catalyst addresses the convergence of 5G and satellite communication networks from the perspective of OSS/BSS and network management. The solution builds on TM Forum’s Connectivity as a Service paradigm to integrate telco and satcom customer facing services (CFSs) into a single core commerce layer followed by intent-driven automation of the order-to-activation process.

Category: Attendees’ Choice Award 

Winner: Data-to-NPS: Boosting NPS using Decision Intelligence

This Catalyst is focused on understanding customer needs through GenAI and digital twins. It has developed a data-driven Net Promoter Score (NPS) management solution. The solution design is based the “Engaging, Using, and Evaluating” of the customer journey in the telecom industry, and NPS management is divided into three parts: product, network and service. 

Moonshot Catalyst winners for 2024:

Category: AI Challenge

Winner: AI-driven EBITDA mastery: Revolutionizing customer journeys

The project is remodelling revenue journeys with GenAI and intent analysis to deliver more than 30% growth in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and operational cost saving. The goal is to create hyper-personalized natural language customer journeys that integrate sales and service engagements, improving both revenue and service assurance while dramatically reducing the cost-to-serve.

Category: Sustainability Challenge

Winner: Sustainability telco by green network evolution

This Moonshot is focused on achieving net zero carbon emissions in different geographical conditions using an innovative digital twin and AI platform. The project spans connectivity services in landscapes ranging from altitudes above 5,000 meters, 50-kilometers offshore and across various terrains from deserts to swamps. 

Category: Growth Challenge

Winner: SmartHive xG

The Moonshot is developing cost-effective 5G use cases for the newly created Port City Colombo urban development in Sri Lanka, bringing autonomous operations for industries and a digital lifestyle for the city. It will serve as a blueprint for smart cities and areas with special economic status, demonstrating how multiple sectors can reap the benefits of 5G networks and the autonomous operations they facilitate.

Category: Attendees’ Choice Award

Winner: GenAI for AN

This Moonshot is working to harness GenAI to automate network maintenance. As CSP networks become more complex, this puts pressure on O&M personnel. This project aims to use GenAI to address these challenges while applying zero-trust and zero-risk principles in the network management resource layer.