Takeaways from Digital Transformation World (DTW) Mumbai 2024

Welcome to the 24th edition of the Beyond the Next Billion newsletter. In this edition, we share a few takeaways from the India leg of TM Forum 's Digital Transformation World event series. So once again, more blog than newsletter in keeping with the season of events at the start of the year.?

Telcos continue to be ripe for Digital Transformation

In 2023, shortly after Mobile World Congress, we had penned a series of post-event notes that were published on LinkedIn. The first two were focused on the future of telecom operators, and is our wont, we went with a couple of analogies to describe some of the predicaments that telcos find themselves in today. The first (published here), recalled a famous (and no less controversial) memo by then Nokia-CEO Stephen Elop, in which he likened Nokia’s predicament to standing on a burning oil rig platform in the North Sea. No good options, be consumed by the fire, or jump into the icy North Sea waters. We had called out a way forward for operators to pursue monetization efforts through consumable APIs on the one hand, while also embracing artificial intelligence (AI) with a view to optimizing networks and driving efficiencies. A year later in 2024, AI and Gen AI were the buzzwords of MWC24, while APIs are seeing considerable momentum within the operator community, so we shall pause for a brief pat on the back for being on the right side of these trends.?

In the second piece (published here), we had likened the state of operator networks to the mythical Gordian knot. A quick recap of the legend is that Alexander the Great, with clear ambitions to rule the known world at the time, did not waste time in trying to untie the knot. Rather, he simply sliced through the knot with his drawn sword. How is this relevant to telcos? It is relevant if we were to posit that telcos were in their current predicaments because they were simply not bold enough with the choices facing them about what to do with their increasingly complex underlying infrastructure. The problems are well known, but the solutions have largely been incremental to date and have not moved the needle.

But all is not lost. The TM Forum has done yeoman’s work in the last few years with the launch of the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) initiative, which has sought to bring operator awareness of, and initiative for digital transformation under a common umbrella using open-source. ODA also is an attempt to bring a number of initiatives into common strands. These include the shift to cloud-native architectures, use of containers for orchestration, APIs for northbound connectivity to applications and more. Ultimately, with increasing industry adoption, the lines between OSS and BSS stacks within the telco network get blurred, or simplified, as the overlaps and complexity is removed.?

There was evidence of some of the progress being made at the Digital Transformation World Asia roadshow on its Mumbai leg this week. With a number of sponsors including Tecnotree Corporation , Tata Communications , 诺基亚 and strong attendance from operators like Jio Platforms Limited (JPL) , this was a well attended event with high level speakers. There was particularly strong attendance from the folks at Jio, given that they are Mumbai-based. Jio is one of the marquee CSP names that have signed up for ODA, with others including Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, BT, Telus, Axiata and more. Jio, or more specifically Jio Platforms, has also launched an Innovation Hub, in partnership with the TM Forum in Navi Mumbai in India. The Hub will focus on “innovation”, “testing and iterating TM Forum standards”, and “developing code assets” for collaboration projects.???

Driving towards an “AI-led” Telco Era??

The event kicked off with a keynote from the TM Forum CTO, George Glass. Unsurprisingly, he spent time talking about the work behind the ODA and progress to date, which includes adoption from some major CSPs listed earlier. Much of the ODA messaging has been focused around the transition of CSPs from the “traditional telco era” to one of the “digital telco”, the latter mapping to 2013-2022. Even without ODA, this makes sense when looking at telco initiatives to adopt cloud technologies, implement NFV/SDN, and more recently refocus these initiatives to drive automation through cloud-native architectures. But CSPs have built new BSS stacks on ODA, and also upgraded their OSS stacks with a view to offering Network as a Service (NaaS) to their customers.?

But despite all of the good work and heavy lifting done over the last decade, it very much feels like we are at the end of the beginning, as it were, of telco transformation. A number of operators have made significant progress based on ODA but that mission already stands usurped by artificial intelligence (AI). So much so that roadmaps have adapted rapidly and are pointing towards an “AI-led” Telco era, where a decoupled and disaggregated OSS/BSS stack sits on top of autonomous network operations that are driven by AI. Indeed, the vision would see AI embedded into every aspect of the infrastructure.?

This new architecture would also allow for open APIs that can go northbound to enable applications and services to tap into network capabilities. In effect, this is the same as the network as a platform concept that has been talked up for some time now. George Glass also spoke about Jio as a case study, where the operator built its platforms on ODA but with open APIs to enable “reusable” components. In fact, Jio was able to reuse components from their telco architecture, specifically their Jio Charging and Rating System (JCRS) to enable IOT solutions for some of the adjacent verticals that its parent company, Reliance Industries Ltd, is involved in, like healthcare and retail.?

Lastly, there was a lot of emphasis placed on the rise of autonomous networks (AN). TM Forum has been working on creating blueprints and frameworks for ANs. This program will be further accelerated by the rise of AI. According to the TM Forum, more than 10 operators have publicly committed to ANs based on ODA. While this is a noteworthy statistic, we believe that the pace of adoption must be accelerated significantly. We noted the presence of some international telco operators at the event who subsequently visited the Innovation Hub and have written in very complimentary terms about the work being done there. Here’s hoping that the many learnings from some of the early movers don’t trickle through to other operators but rather, hit critical mass and disrupt the current paradigm.?

#Jio #TMForum #ODA #NaaS #AI #GenAI #LLMs #OpenAPIs