- DTW Ignite is held in Copenhagen, a glorious city in June
- The show is a gathering place for a lot of Tier 1 CEOs and cloud executives
- TM Forum seems more relevant than ever with AI and network automation
DTW IGNITE, COPENHAGEN — For years I’ve avoided the TM Forum’s annual event about OSS and BSS. It just sounded incredibly boring to talk about telecom standards and Catalyst projects (yawn).
But of course, anything you resist, persists. And earlier this week, I found myself on a plane to Copenhagen for TM Forum’s annual DTW Ignite event.
And … it’s been surprisingly awesome.
A magical city
First of all, Copenhagen is a magical city in June. Its botanic gardens alone are worth the trip. There’s no admission fee, and you can just stroll through glorious gardens as long as you want. I snapped a few photos that reminded me of idealized European gardens captured in prints that my grandmother hung on her living room walls.
Also, the city is full of kind and funny people.
My guide on a canal tour talked about various kings of Denmark who are all named either King Christian or King Frederick. Those are the only two king’s names allowed by law. The Swedes are the arch enemy of the Danes, and there’s a statue of one of the kings of Denmark in the royal courtyard. The king is riding a horse, and the horse’s butt faces Sweden (on purpose).
Getting to telecom
I could go on about my day, touring Copenhagen, but this is, after all, a business-to-business publication covering telecom. So, getting to that, the DTW Ignite conference has been good, as well.
It’s a terrific forum for meeting folks in the telecom industry, feeling somewhat like a mini-Mobile World Congress. The DTW show is projected to count about 4,500 attendees.
Prior to the show, Joe Cumello, SVP and general manager of Ciena’s Blue Planet, said DTW is a great show to meet with customers. “We go because all of our customers go,” he said. “We’ll do 30-40 meetings there. For me to travel to 30-40 places around the world, it's really inefficient. I could see them all at DTW, so it's a great forum.”
And it turned out that the focus wasn’t strictly on OSS/BSS.
Andy Tiller, TM Forum’s EVP for products and services, said, “There is a big ecosystem on the IT side of industry. But the show is also becoming more relevant on the network side because the network is becoming more software, and you need a much more end-to-end view.”
Tiller said the goal of autonomous networks has also sparked new interest. “It’s made the TM Forum much more relevant to the network part of our industry,” he said.
Five layers of automation
The TM Forum has specified five layers of autonomy, ranging from Level 1 where some automation is present but human intervention is still required, to Level 5 where the network is fully autonomous, managing and optimizing itself without human involvement.
According to TM Forum’s website, many telecom operators are striving to achieve Level 4 (a state of high autonomy) in 2025 as a strategic goal. A handful of entities have already achieved this milestone, with China Mobile and Tsinghua University leading the charge late last year. Vivo in Brazil followed suit in January 2025.
Tiller said Level 4 networks are a big focus right now because they’re achievable, but Level 5 networks are still “quite far away.”
Aside from IT topics and network automation, there was a lot of focus on AI.
And I noticed that the European telcos were kind of obsessed with sovereign cloud, which is not a big focus in the U.S. But of course, the EU is composed of several countries that have a desire to keep their government data confined within their own borders.
One executive, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the Trump administration is driving even more interest in sovereign clouds because European governments are afraid that the U.S. government might force American public cloud providers to turn over sensitive data.
Catch all of our coverage from this year's DTW Ignite show here.