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[email protected]AI in telecom is finally graduating from slide decks to real operational impact, but the jump from pilot to production is where most teams get stuck. I sit down with Guy Lupo from the TM Forum, who leads the trustworthy AI and data mission, to talk about what it actually takes to become an AI native telco and why the industry’s next gains depend less on flashy demos and more on operational proof.
We break down where operators are seeing traction right now, like network fault management, faster mean time to resolve, fewer tickets, and churn reduction, and why those wins correlate directly with clean, structured signals. Then we dig into the uncomfortable middle ground: AI that augments people feels manageable, but AI embedded into tools and workflows raises hard questions about governance, monitoring, and accountability. Guy’s point lands hard: trust cannot be claimed, it must be demonstrated continuously, especially as autonomy increases.
From there, we connect the dots to risk-based regulation and sovereignty. Frameworks like the EU AI Act signal a shift away from checklist compliance toward auditable evidence over time, with telecom increasingly treated as high risk critical infrastructure. We also explore emerging concepts like agent passports, plus why the industry is asking for a shared “agent factory” reference architecture and practical, no regret patterns such as Model as a Service for consistent, governable model access. We close by looking ahead to physical AI and robotics and the surprising telecom advantage: the operational workforce that can install, maintain, and safely support devices at scale.
If you care about AI governance, autonomous networks, agentic AI, and the real-world path to production in telecom, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the one trust gap you want the industry to solve first.
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