TM Forum brings in Guy Lupo to lead its AI push

Lupo has more than three decades of experience in senior roles within global telco and enterprise companies, and is a Fellow of the TM Forum, awarded for his work on Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) standards during his time with Telstra, we’re told.

He is currently pursuing a PhD at Swinburne University, focusing on developing a metric for the trustworthiness of AI systems.

The goal of the AI & Data Innovation ‘industry mission’ he’ll be heading up is to accelerate AI adoption for CSPs, “delivering enhanced operations, improved customer experience, and driving long-term growth.”

The mission will work on best practices, standards, data architectures, ontologies, APIs, and proofs of concepts to help the industry “embrace AI safely and affordably.”

Ultimately, the goal is to serve up some strategies telcos can adopt to drive operational efficiency, accelerate service innovation, and enable better business models, states the release.

"I am excited to lead the AI & Data Innovation Mission and help our Members navigate the complexities of AI adoption,” said Guy Lupo, Mission Lead, AI & Data Innovation, TM Forum. “My vision is to create a framework where telcos can confidently adopt solutions that are co-created with TM Forum’s vast community of industry peers. This will ensure that the solutions are not only modern and relevant but also truly reflective of the transformation journey required for telcos to excel in the AI & data large-scale era.”

Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum added: "I’m thrilled to welcome Guy to our leadership team. As we enter the AI era, the telecom industry is at a critical juncture, and AI will play a pivotal role in unlocking new experiences, products and growth in purpose and shareholder value. Guy’s deep industry knowledge, proven leadership experience and passion will be invaluable to helping our AI & Data industry mission drive real change, delivering immense value for all our members.”

In September last year TM Forum teamed up with AWS and launched the Generative AI Maturity Interactive Tool (GAMIT), designed to help operators with integrating GenAI.

The tool is based on anonymised data from AI decision-makers at CSPs worldwide, and it is supposed to enable telcos to “benchmark their generative AI maturity’ against peers, identify priority use cases and ‘rapidly move from development through to production at scale.”