TM Forum Innovate Dallas: AI, Autonomy, and Telecom Reality

Just back from TM Forum Innovate Dallas last week, and here’s my quick take on it in case you missed it. I had to make a call—stay local for Ericsson’s North America Analyst event in Boston (day 2 of TMF), or hop a flight to Dallas to catch up with a dozen clients and meet some new faces. Went with Dallas this round. I hope to attend Ericsson next year. ~800 real attendees (vs. 1,100 registered). Less hype, more honesty. The vibe? Telecom finally confronting the hard truths of AI and autonomy. Reality Checks: Data First, AI Second. Graphs, ontologies, and inventory are the gatekeepers of autonomy. Pragmatic AI. ROI today is in BSS-adjacent tasks (bill shock, call center assist, SLA proposals)—not OSS closed loops. SIs Leveling Up. From lift-and-shift to building models, APIs, and driving change. Delivery isn’t the bottleneck—data quality and culture are. Agents Need Agents. ServiceNow + RADCOM showed multi-agent workflows in action. Google Cloud tackling graph-based inventory. The use of Google Cloud Spanner Graph helps to express network inventory as a topology graph directly on tabular datasets. Vendor Impact. Netcracker Technology, Nokia, Amdocs, Snowflake, IBM, Wavelo—all pivoting from POC to measurable KPIs such as average handle time (AHT), first-time resolution (FTR), net promoter score (NPS), and operating expenses (OPEX). Big shout out to Nik Willetts Dean Ramsay George Glass and the rest of the team for another successful event! Had some great hallway catch-ups with Patrick Lopez Marc Hayden Sreedhar Rao Jean Lawrence Shawn Hakl Rick Lievano all with their ear firmly to the ground. Follow our full team at Appledore Research #Telecom #TMForum #AgenticAI #AutonomousNetworks #AI #Data