This year’s DTW event had an interesting vibe. It felt like maybe – just maybe – telecom might be about to turn a corner. The TM Forum audience – software and operations-focused, rather than hardware, spectrum or regulation-focused – seems now to have a greater sense of self-confidence. It *knows* what the right forward path for telecom looks like: it’s software, cloud, and AI. It’s automation and really enabling innovation. It is, truly, platforms and partnerships. It’s open and disaggregated. Don’t tell the GSMA but it’s *this* community that has the power to make something valuable out of 5G. That path forward (rather than the default option of wait-and-see, or modest incremental changes) is also now properly important. For investors, for economies, telcos, for enterprises, for consumers, for governments. For the climate. For people. And the timing of telcos’ plan for change is not negotiable anymore. Too much has already changed around them. As Allison Kirkby (currently CEO at Telia but heading to the hot seat at BT in 2024) put it: “It’s time for operators to place new bets”. (Her experience transforming Telia – “We had to change everything”- will be interesting to see applied at BT). TM Forum […]