SK Telecom will collaborate with the Forum to accelerate the industry’s move towards becoming AI-native, including extending the widely adopted Open Digital Architecture (ODA) to be AI-ready.
At the same time, TM Forum will provide SK Telecom with the tools, standards and best practices it needs to realise its ambition of transitioning from a telecoms operator to a global AI company.
SK Telecom’s TM Forum membership is a “natural progression”, the company says following close collaboration with the Forum and its global members on AI.
“Now more than ever, we need to centralise and focus our efforts on AI, creating more value at less cost for our customers,” Chung Suk-geun, chief AI global officer at SK Telecom said.
“The TM Forum is the leading global member-led association on transformation and AI, and they are uniquely positioned to help us on this journey.
“TM Forum membership, alongside our work with the Global Telco AI Alliance, will allow us to develop a reliable telecommunications infrastructure, ensuring ease of use as a model-as-a-service, and establishing global business cases.”
In addition, SK Telecom founded the Global Telco AI Alliance, created in partnership with e& and fellow TM Forum members Deutsche Telekom and Singtel to accelerate AI transformation for telcos.
In October 2023, SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom announced the first initiative from the Alliance to create a telco-specific large language model (LLM) for digital assistants across customer service, networks and more.
Nik Willetts, CEO at the TM Forum, said, “AI has the potential to truly transform our industry: from dramatic efficiency boosts driving profitability, to new business models and services generating new revenue streams.
“As we move from the Digital Telco to the AI-Native Telco era, we’re delighted to welcome SK Telecom to support our mission to accelerate AI adoption, collaborating with our worldwide membership, members of the Global Telco AI Alliance, and the wider AI community.”
