TM Forum and Accenture to build telecom's first AI trust certification — 72% of carriers say their AI is trustworthy, only 14% can prove it
Telecom alliance TM Forum and Accenture on Tuesday launched a multi-year program to create the industry's first Trustworthy AI Governance Certification — a benchmark for the agent-to-agent era, where the gap between believing AI is trustworthy and proving it is 58 percentage points.
TM Forum and Accenture on Tuesday announced a multi-year Trustworthy AI program that will create what they describe as the industry's first AI trust certification for telecom — a governance benchmark meant to give carriers verifiable evidence that their AI systems, and their agents' interactions with each other, are safe to run autonomously.
Described as a strategic industry collaboration program, the initiative centers on a Trustworthy AI Governance Certification: an industry-standard benchmark for trusted AI that measures governance maturity, workforce readiness and operational accountability across the telco sector. The goal, in TM Forum's framing, is to help carriers deploy autonomous operations with proof — not promises — that agent-to-agent interactions and decisions can deliver business outcomes at scale.
The 58-point trust gap
The program targets the gap between AI ambition and AI evidence. According to TM Forum research cited in the announcement, 72% of communications service providers believe their AI capabilities are trustworthy — but only 14% can verify that claim. That 58-percentage-point gulf, the alliance argues, is exactly what boards must close before delegating decisions and actions to autonomous systems.
“Trust enables autonomy to scale, but trustworthiness only becomes operational when every principle is supported by continuous, verifiable evidence,” said Guy Lupo, EVP of AI and Data at TM Forum, in the announcement.
Agent-to-agent trust, made measurable
The certification is built for the agent era: the program promises carriers verifiable evidence that agent-to-agent interactions and decisions are trustworthy and can deliver business outcomes at scale. By making trust measurable, TM Forum says, the program will help leaders approve AI use cases faster, accelerate strategic decision-making, target investment planning and advance operational execution.
Why telecom is going first
Telecom has both the motive and the means. The industry is pushing toward level-4 autonomous networks, and it sees AI as a prize worth chasing: Accenture chief responsible AI officer Arnab Chakraborty has put the opportunity at $60 to $100 billion of economic value annually, across customer experience, enterprise autonomy and autonomous networks. The trust question was already the industry's defining debate — TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts put the 72%-vs-14% finding on stage at DTW Ignite 2026 in Copenhagen, and TM Forum's Trustworthy AI and Data mission, whose board includes Chakraborty, has been building the governance framework behind it.
What comes next
The announcement describes a multi-year effort, not a one-off standard. The stated goal is to turn AI trust from a policy aspiration into a measurable operational capability — giving organizations the evidence and criteria to assess, benchmark and scale autonomous operations with accountability, transparency and control. For TM Forum's membership — the London-based nonprofit alliance counts more than 800 member organizations, from carriers to hyperscalers — it may become the first industry-wide answer to the question every board now faces: prove it. Coverage of the announcement notes the program is designed as a common blueprint for trust as carriers scale generative AI.