TelcoTitans' DTW Ignite 2026 coverage in association with 
- TM Forum Chair explains how operators must harness energy of “wild dogs of AI” and create a layer of trust for AI deployments.
- Operators are uniquely positioned to leverage their network access to become the secure trust and governance layer for the broader AI economy.
- Weighing the cost-benefit of AI‑enabled efficiency opportunities versus potential to lean in to accelerating innovation, Dr. Steffen Roehn advises that “the second option is better”.
- The comments follow a keynote where he urged the industry to embrace speed of action as a competitive advantage.
TM Forum Chair Dr. Steffen Roehn is sharing his excitement for an industry he sees waking up to its AI-driven potential and the pressing need for tangible growth.
More specifically, he points to AI bringing unprecedented change for a sector where “everybody understands we have to move faster, otherwise this opportunity is gone”.
For Roehn, when interviewed by TelcoTitans TV’s Matt Leary at June’s DTW Ignite 2026 in Copenhagen, the most exciting development this year is to see “the whole industry waking up to this notion of how we can get back to growth”.
Key takeaways
- Encourage rapid experimentation but simultaneously invest in “trustworthy AI” capabilities (governance, enforcement, products) to manage risk.
- Educate your board, executives and regulators on telcos’ role in steering AI’s transformation of business and society.
- Prioritise AI projects that both boost efficiency and enable new services for monetisation, not just cost-cutting.
Operators can leverage reputation and trust to create a crucial AI role
Themes again writ large at this year’s conference were the three TM Forum ‘missions’ relating to composable IT and ecosystems, autonomous networks, and trustworthy AI and data.
Roehn stressed the importance of speed and monetisation, explaining how the conversation has moved beyond CTOs and CIOs, to CEOs and the wider boardroom where there is increasing understanding of the importance of creating tangible commercial opportunities and benefits.
Explaining the opportunity to create a “trusted layer for AI”, he used an analogy of wild dogs who had great energy but sometimes did the wrong things or even bad things if deployed for the wrong or nefarious purposes. “You let them go and do their experiments, but then you invest into trustworthy AI, which is the data layer, the governance layer, and all of that”, he guided.
“If you’re a telco CEO, think of using that as an opportunity for yourself, because I think telcos with full access to the network can be the trusted enforcement layer for AI if they have the right products and services.”
Roehn.
Redeployment beats redundancy
Speaking about the opportunities afforded by AI, Roehn expressed his view that AI-driven breakthroughs should not necessarily mean large rounds of redundancies.
He said that companies should think about the potential upside and productivity of redeploying people to fully exploit the potential of AI.
Using the example of AI software development lifecycle (SDLC) and the choice between losing or redeploying developers, he urged telecoms leaders to ask themselves: “what kind of innovation, what kind of new services, what kind of things can I actually bring to the market and out-compete all the other guys?”. “And if you ask me, the second one is the better option”, he added.
Steffen Roehn remains as committed as ever to driving change as Chairman of the TM Forum, a role he has held for seven years alongside his day job as Senior Advisor — and previously Partner — at consultancy Bain & Company. His TelcoTitans interview followed a keynote speech in which he described the event as “a gathering of the people who are crazy enough to reinvent telecoms faster than anyone else expects us to do”.
Observing that we now live in a world where AI can write code, create software, operate networks, and converse with consumers, partners, and other AI agents, he stressed belief that the industry’s strategic competitive advantage is speed rather than scale, size, or organisational complexity. “Speed of learning together, speed of deployment, and speed of building trust in our membership community [is our competitive advantage]”, he told the audience.
The TM Forum has been at the forefront of accelerating change within the sector, as well as in setting the direction of travel, from fostering telco-to-techco transformation and adoption of Open Digital Architecture (ODA), to setting a roadmap for network autonomy. The organisation today plays a key role in network transformation, expanding its remit and reach as it progresses.
