Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
So we are in Copenhagen at DTW Ignite 2025. I'm here with Andy Tiller. He is executive VP of Member Product and services at the TM Forum. Andy, great to see you again. Thanks so much for joining us, Andy Ray. So telcos are making a lot of progress in their efforts to build autonomous networks and they tend to cite the TM Forum's, autonomous network projects when they're talking about their progress. Can you give us an update on how the Forum is helping telcos to actually track their progress as they introduce autonomous networks operations?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (00:40):
Yes. So we've got this scheme of autonomous network levels from zero, which is fully manual operation to level five, which is a conceptually fully self-running network with no human intervention. Today's target really is level four and by definition that's where we begin to introduce intelligent AI based automation to specific network domains. So operators are targeting getting to level four automation for specific scenarios such as fault management on the radio access network or energy efficiency optimization of the IP network and so on. So they're targeting a set of high value scenarios, 20 or so where they're really trying to introduce this AI based automation. There's a very good business case for doing it because they can save a lot of money or improve customer experience very, very strongly by doing this level of automation. And so TM Forum has been creating a standardized way to measure. How do you know whether you've got to level four? What are the characteristics of that? How do you know? So members have been creating very standardized tools, we call them inlets, an level evaluation tools that operators can use in a very consistent way anywhere in the world. They know if they're measuring a particular thing, energy efficiency optimization on the RAN over here in Denmark, over there in China, they're doing it in the same way,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:06):
Right?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (02:06):
They score 3.6. It means the same thing in both places.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:09):
Okay, excellent. Well, I'm sure it does get quoted a lot. I mean, just recently telecom TV had an event and people were saying we're 2.7 on this and 2.3 and aiming for 3.3. So it really is a measure that people use and so it's great that there's going to be consistency and people be able to understand what the different operators are doing. Now of course the TM forum, it's a network operator member led organization. Has anything changed, say in the past year about what the members are looking for from the forum? Are there any new requests we want you to work on this, focus on that kind of thing?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (02:48):
Yes. Technology is evolving all the time and the need for common approaches to how we use the technology in our industry is always there. So autonomous networks is a very good example of applying new technology to old problems That needs to be, there's a huge benefit in the industry coming together and figuring out how to do it together, the pre-competitive things. So AI is the huge topic. Obviously we have these things called agents now that can reason and they can make decisions and execute actions autonomously, but in order to execute their actions, they have to make the existing OSS and BSS and network systems do their bidding. How does that work? There's a thousand ways you could construct that, but we only need one way in our industry. So how agents interact with existing ODA software components, how those ODA software components can become agents so they can reason for themselves and talk to the other components that they need to talk to to get their work done. This is a fascinating area. It's really exciting to see work in our innovation hub and catalyst projects defining how this should work. A simple example would be the guardrails you need to put in place for agents so that they don't go off piece and spend a fortune on something that's not worth it or contravene regulatory compliance. These things you can imagine can...

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:28):
I guess will undo what other agents are trying to do and it's that kind of thing, right?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (04:31):
It can compete with each other, intents can conflict. So we don't need to define these the way this is implemented a thousand different ways for our industry. We only need one that's fit for telecoms. And so these kinds of things, there's new things coming up all the time. The core of what TM Forum does bring in the industry together to debate and discuss these things and innovate in our catalysts and innovation hub projects and then bring those things that learning into create standards. The work remains the same, but the topics are always new.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:04):
And you mentioned the catalyst there a couple of times and that's something that this event is well known for with different combinations of companies coming each year and showing off some specific development they're working on. Any highlights from this year's catalyst that you can pick out? I know it's hard and you don't want to be sort of favor one over the other, but anything that sort of stood out for you in particular?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (05:25):
It's very hard because there's 60 fantastic projects, but there's one on agentic ODA, which is figuring out exactly what I was saying. It's proposed a whole orchestration framework that would be very generic that would integrate these AI AI components into the ODA architecture. It's created a pattern for us to then expand and turn into standards. That's a really nice one. Another big theme for the show is Open APIs network monetization through initiatives like Open Gateway.

(06:04):
We have some good catalysts on that. So there's one called Spatial Web, which is showing how these Camara APIs complimented by the TM Forum APIs that enable these services to be delivered can be applied to interesting use cases such as retail, virtual reality in retail or extended reality in retail stores. More prosaically, but perhaps even more importantly, there is a catalyst project by a wholesale broadband team. So they have been standardizing the wholesale retail interface for buying and selling home internet connections, fiber connections, big problem in Europe in that this has never been standardized. All these customer interfaces are very expensive to maintain. This project is standardizing it and saving a huge amount of money for the industry, and that's beginning to be rolled out in places like Germany and Norway already.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:57):
Okay, that's interesting. I mean, these are the things I guess people go, oh, interfaces for broadband. That's not really interesting, but this is the heart and soul of why people come here to find out these things that will save the money and make the money at the same time, right?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (07:12):
That's right, that's right. Some of the work looks mundane, but actually is extremely important for the industry and is extremely exciting to see it come to fruition and really make a difference to our members.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:24):
Okay. Andy, thanks very much for your time. I know you're very busy at this event, that big annual bash for the TM Forum, but great insights, good to talk to you and catch up again in 2026, if not before I guess.

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (07:36):
I hope so. Thanks very much indeed, Ray.