The world-renowned TM Forum, an alliance of telco and tech organisations, and Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, have inaugurated the first ever TM Forum Innovation Hub in Mumbai, India. This milestone event, distinguished by the presence of luminaries from both TM Forum and Jio and representatives from Innovation Hub Founding Members such as Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Google Cloud, Orange, Telenor and Vodafone, hints at a promising trajectory for the telecom and tech industry.
With its first projects focused on Generative AI (Gen AI), Large Language Models (LLM) and Open Digital Architecture, this is the first Innovation Hub in existence with a clear vision to expedite industry growth. The novel hub is situated at the Reliance Corporate IT Park in Navi, Mumbai, facilitating ideal conditions for hybrid teams composed of global talent to ideate and bring to fruition solutions to longstanding industry challenges.
The choice of Mumbai as the location for the inaugural TM Forum Innovation Hub is symbolic given India's prestige as a global hub of software development talent. Moreover, this move is in line with TM Forum's longstanding commitment to India, home to more than 37,000 active Forum member professionals.
The Innovation Hub's initial focus will be on applying Gen AI and LLM to high-priority use cases for telcos. This includes developing an architecture blueprint to foster responsible usage of generative AI within established telecoms technology landscapes. Furthermore, it will also address the associated security, privacy, accuracy, performance and scalability challenges that come along.
Simultaneously, the Innovation Hub will also work towards accelerating the development and uptake of TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture, which lays the framework for creating modular, reusable cloud-native software to replace traditional BSS and OSS.
Mr Akash Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, shared his enthusiasm on this collaboration, saying, “The TM Forum Innovation Hub is about delivering real-world solutions that will change our industry,” further adding, “We are delighted to see the first innovation hub open on our Mumbai campus as I believe Mumbai is the perfect location to foster the innovation needed. This is a really exciting time for Jio, TM Forum and the wider telecoms industry and we are honoured to be at the heart of this project."
Dr. Steffen Roehn, TM Forum Chair and Partner at Bain & Company, noted, "Rapid, open collaboration is today more important for our industry's future than ever before," and expressed delight over the collaboration amongst founding members.
TM Forum CEO, Nik Willetts echoed, "Our vision is to bring together our industry's best talent in a neutral, entrepreneurial environment to rapidly deliver breakthrough thinking and answers to the industry's most pressing challenges.”
The Innovation Hub program was first announced two months ago at the TM Forum's annual DTW – Ignite conference in Copenhagen. The outcomes of Innovation Hub projects promise to benefit the entire TM Forum membership and the wider industry by providing innovative strategies to navigate industry challenges, validating and refining TM Forum standards, and accelerating the development of code assets. The pilot phase of the Innovation Hub program is projected to conclude by March 2024.