TMForum

Registration is now open for Innovate Asia 2026, November 17 to 19 at Centara Grand at CentralWorld in Bangkok, Thailand. As Asia leads the industry's race to 2030, the event will bring together telecom leaders, technology partners and solution makers to explore how the region is accelerating the shift from architecture to autonomy.

The AI era is raising the stakes for telecom networks. Telstra's Kim Krogh Andersen and TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts discuss what it actually takes to get ready — and why the industry can't afford to wait. The rise of AI isn't just changing what telecom networks carry. It's changing what those networks need to be.

TM Forum today revealed the agenda and first headline speakers for Innovate Americas 2026, taking place October 6-7 in Dallas, Texas. Confirmed speakers include senior leaders from the Americas’ largest carriers – including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and TELUS – alongside executives from the wider connectivity ecosystem driving AI adoption, network automation and operational transformation.

As connectivity becomes a commodity, where do telcos compete? Gartner's Maryam Minhas sits down with Ayman Fathy of Vodafone Egypt and TM Forum's Joann O'Brien at DTW Ignite 2026 to explore how customer experience has become the industry's defining competitive frontier — and what it actually takes to win there. Seven years ago, Vodafone Egypt scored 200 on Gartner's Digital Customer Experience benchmark. Today, that number exceeds 800, making them the leading telco in the world by that measure.

At DTW Ignite 2026 in Copenhagen, a single finding set the tone for the whole event. In his opening keynote, TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts revealed that while 72% of CSPs say their AI is trustworthy, only 14% can produce evidence to prove it. "Get trust right," he said, "anything is possible. Get trust wrong, and nothing else matters." That research landed as a wake-up call.

There's a pin on Mark Austin's jacket. It says: "No token cost." It's a conversation starter. It's also a strategic goal. Tokenomics is the theme of the industry right now — and at AT&T, with over 40 billion tokens flowing through its systems on an average day, getting a handle on how those tokens are being spent is critical. As recently as September 2025, that number stood at 5 billion.

The achievement of 500 professionals attaining TM Forum’s Autonomous Network (AN) Levels certification marks far more than a training milestone. It is a clear signal that the telecom industry is building the skills, common language, and operational discipline needed to accelerate the journey toward Level 4 Autonomous Networks.

At DTW Ignite 2026 in Copenhagen, Michel van Buitenen, Managing Vice President at Gartner, sat down with Willie Stegmann, EVP, Composable IT and Ecosystems at TM Forum, for a conversation about where the industry stands, what's holding it back, and why AI for customer experience (AI4CX) has moved to the very top of the CIO agenda. It was also a conversation that marked a meaningful moment: Gartner's recent arrival as a TM Forum member.

At DTW Ignite 2026 in Copenhagen, TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts sat down with Muninder Singh Sambi, VP Product Management and Supply Chain at Google Distributed Cloud, and Abhitabh Kushwaha, AVP AI Networks at Verizon, to talk about one of the most ambitious engineering programs in the industry right now: using temporal digital twins turn AI ambition into AN reality. The problem no dashboard can solve Verizon's starting point is brutally honest. Network operations, as they exist today, are reactive.

Mauritius Telecom joins TM Forum as founding contributor and co-chair to help shape the world’s first standards-based MODaaS certification framework for trusted AI model operations and monetisation. TM Forum today announced a new global collaboration with Mauritius Telecom to advance trusted Model-as-a-Service (MODaaS), with Mauritius Telecom taking a pioneering role in helping shape how AI models are operated, governed and monetised across the telecom industry.