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TM Forum's Executive Vice President - AI & Data Innovation, Guy Lupo, discusses how TM Forum's AI & data mission is guiding telecoms toward AI-native transformation through leadership alignment, democratized AI adoption and a unified, industry-validated AI blueprint to drive scalable, ethical and efficient innovation.
Guy Lupo, TM Forum
Unlocking the future: TM Forum’s AI & data mission
The telecommunications industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven innovation are no longer futuristic concepts, they are the foundation for operational efficiency, customer experience, and sustainable growth.
For 35 years TM Forum, with its members, has led industry standardisation, through the creation of the renowned and unique ODA (Open Digital Architecture). But AI represents an unprecedented change.
TM Forum has formed the AI & Data Innovation Mission to provide the industry with a clear, actionable pathway to navigate this new all-encompassing transformation. It will require change and focus from all parts of the organisation from leadership through to technology and business teams.
The AI & Data mission has developed three core pillars to implement the required pathways for change:
Effective AI adoption starts at the top. Leadership must not only understand the opportunities AI presents but also the risks and responsibilities that come with it. TM Forum’s approach to AI for leadership will empower executives to benchmark their organization’s AI maturity, set clear roadmaps, and govern change.
To do this first the leadership must understand the current stage of maturity of each part of their organization:
Augmented: At this stage, AI tools assist humans, enhancing productivity without replacing core business processes. Think of AI helping customer service agents draft responses or analyse data more quickly. The impact is typically up to 20% improvement in productivity.
Automated: Here, AI agents take over specific tasks, automating parts of business processes. For example, an AI agent might handle customer complaint analysis in real time, freeing up human agents for more complex work. This stage can deliver significant growth and efficiency.
Autonomous: The future lies in agentic AI-systems that can operate with minimal human oversight, managing end-to-end processes and making decisions in real time with minimal oversight from a human who has final approval. This level of autonomy can replace 60-80% of certain roles, fundamentally changing how organizations operate.
Leaders are encouraged to assess their current balance of augmented, automated, and autonomous processes across each department and use the TM Forum framework to find the right balance. Each function, whether it be network operations, HR, or customer care etc., will have a different mix, reflecting unique business needs and aspirations. This approach enables CEOs and their teams to craft tailored roadmaps, set realistic targets, and manage workforce transitions responsibly which is abstracted from technology, allowing prioritisation of investment across the company, and a coherent roadmap for the board
AI leadership will have to drive a new way of looking at risk from AI. The data debt provides new challenges that will have long term implication, much like investment in network infrastructure for 25 years. Leaders will not want to be responsible for leading their companies down the same siloed way of working, where each AI agentic system is has its own data and cannot operate with the other systems.
TM Forum will provide the frameworks to address these challenges, ensuring that AI adoption is both scalable and compliant with emerging regulations.
TM Forum will develop a benchmark with the industry and create guidelines and governance principles to facilitate board-level discussions about AI-native transformation.
TM Forum’s AI for Everyone (AI4X) is the second core pillar and will focus on democratizing AI based on the ODA foundational work, making it available and useful across all business functions. AI’s true potential is realized when it’s accessible to all, not just data scientists or IT teams, but to the whole organization in a simple and easy-to-use way.
TM Forum will develop industry curated ‘AI4X: The Path to Production Playbooks’, to standardize the business approach for AI solutions for each functional area. By enabling CxOs to report to the CEO about the level of investment using pre-validated templates and best practices, organizations do not need to reinvent the process or business case for the delivery of AI use cases.
Democratizing and accelerating AI innovation is about recognizing the business function's stage of innovation. Today, there is great confusion between experimentation for research and risk reduction purposes ("the art of the possible") using fake or synthetic data and trial projects with vendors and real data.
The AI for Everyone playbook will emphasize skill development and talent for each function to provide a predictable and risk-free process. The playbook will focus on training programs that raise AI literacy among non-technical staff and cross-departmental projects that foster a culture of innovation. This inclusive approach ensures that AI benefits are widespread, driving productivity and engagement at every level.
The AI for Everyone (AI4X) provides the template for all your AI use cases, removing the months it takes to justify and kick off internal projects, build SOWs, engage systems integrators, etc. We are going to provide the basis for what might one day become the Chief AI & Data officer playbook for owning new AI program and lifecycle process for AI4X within the business
We must not rush to implement a new technology otherwise we risk the creation data silos and data debt instead of the usual technical debt.
Unlike traditional technical debt—managed through disciplined architectural oversight—data debt arises when proprietary AI models, infrastructure dependencies, and geopolitical constraints lock critical insights and datasets into immovable systems. This debt compounds exponentially as machine learning feedback loops deepen integration with centralized infrastructure, creating gravitational "data mass" that binds organizations to specific vendors, regions, and regulatory regimes. With sovereignty laws and export controls tightening globally, communication service providers (CSPs) risk catastrophic operational disruption if foundational AI assets become stranded.
One of the common best practices to control and manage technical and data debt is the application of an enterprise architecture function, driven by a set of agreed and ideally industry backed set of principles and capabilities
These are also referred to by many practitioners as a blueprint.
TM Forum will build on its already internationally recognised ODA (Open Digital Architecture) standards to create the first and only harmonised AI-Native blueprint
This blueprint will be the foundation for sustainable, scalable AI adoption for the telecommunications industry
Traditional architectures often lock data within proprietary models, creating “data gravity” that makes it difficult to innovate or switch vendors. An AI-Native ODA will set out to:
- Democratize data access: Enabling federated learning and interoperability through standardized APIs.
- Ensure trustworthy agents: Providing lifecycle management and ethical guardrails for AI systems.
- Provide adaptive security: Embedding privacy, explainability, and compliance into the architecture.
- Enable native AI operations: Supporting continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) for AI models and automated monitoring.
Through our current ODA programmes, 240 individual participants from over 100 member companies have already been working to create over 34 assets around the use and implementation of AI.
TM Forum’s AI&D mission will bring together all these programmes to create one harmonized blueprint. This is truly unique within the industry as it will create the only framework that is co-created and validated by the industry itself.
The blueprint will take the current work and focus it into 4 functional areas:
Unlike vendor-specific solutions, TM Forum’s blueprint is built through collaborative workshops, real-world catalyst projects, and ongoing harmonization of best practices. A process that ensures that the framework is not only comprehensive but also adaptable to the evolving needs of CSPs.
TM Forum is unique in its focus on industry collaboration and innovation. The blueprint will be continuously refined through industry input, ensuring it remains relevant and effective as AI technologies and business models evolve.
TM Forum’s AI & Data Mission provides CSPs with a unified, industry-validated approach to AI adoption. By focusing on leadership, democratization, and robust technology enablers, the mission accelerates time-to-value, reduces risk, and unlocks significant business benefits.
As the only source for industry-validated AI blueprints, TM Forum empowers telecoms to move confidently from digital to AI-native operations. The journey is collaborative, rigorous, and designed to deliver lasting impact.
There are two ways to get involved with the TM Forum’s AI&D mission
