Digital Business Marketplace Phase 5 – Catalyst Project

London – September 21, 2022: The UK Government will explore the use of TM Forum standards as part of its Ecosystem of Trust (EoT) pilot with the Digital Business Marketplace / African Trade Corridor (DBM/ATC) consortium.

The DBM/ATC consortium EoT pilot is one of six pilots being led by the UK Government to explore ways to improve trade via a trusted trader approach, with the consortium being coordinated by the Institute of Export & International Trade (IoE&IT). The consortium is working with the UK Government and its agencies to test the TLIP (Trade Logistics Information Pipeline), a new way of ensuring that every step of the trade journey is easily captured so that the government can access better quality data in real time. The pilot covers a European Trade route corridor and an African trade corridor.

The Ecosystem of Trust (EoT) is a border model which enables the Government to reduce and move physical checks away from the border. The model uses data insight into supply chain technology to secure the movement of goods, and trusted trader relationships to give border agencies confidence about the actors moving goods. The model could both create a more secure border, while limiting the need for the government to conduct compliance activities at the border, with traders allowed to perform more self-assessment at their premises. Ultimately it could remove the transactional nature of customs/border processes. The UK Government’s objective is to test if the pilot approaches are operationally viable, cost-effective and scalable. By exploring the variety of technology/supply chain solutions available, plus TM Forum’s ecosystem and monetization standards illustrated in the Digital Business Marketplace catalyst work, the government plans to identify standards so that implementations can scale up to address the whole border – and also be deployable reliably with partner countries.

Kevin Shakespeare, Director of Strategic Projects and International Development at IoE&IT said, “the six EoT Pilot consortia will provide important insights and conclusions on how to accelerate not just trusted trader processes, but will also provide insights on how to leverage new technologies to secure global trade. This work will contribute to the next stage where legislation should incorporate open standards to enable implementation of new digital techniques which can scale and be adopted not just in UK borders but with our partners.”

Aaron Boasman-Patel, Vice President, AI & Customer Experience, TM Forum said, “Catalyst projects showcase the power of collaboration, bringing together a wide range of companies, industries and ecosystems not only in telecom but also in media, entertainment, health, cities, energy, banking, industrial manufacturing, airports and government. Championed by communications service providers together with industry vertical leaders, Catalyst projects accelerate innovation, prove the application of new technologies, and in this case will support the evaluation of a standards approach to leverage new technologies for trade.”

TM Forum’s Catalyst program provides a unique collaborative environment where organizations from around the globe work together to create solutions to key industry challenges. At Digital Transformation World this year, 40 Catalyst teams are demonstrating their proof-of-concept work.

Over 150 different companies and hundreds of individuals took part in the Catalyst projects showcased at Digital Transformation World. The projects included 5G use cases and monetization, IT and network transformation, applications of AI and blockchain, Open APIs, IoT, Digital Ecosystems and more.

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About DBM
DBM’s Phase 5 team spans three initiatives: MEC as a Second Horizontal (Intelligent Edge), Smart Airports, and Frictionless Borders incorporating the EoT pilot. Phase 5 members are Agile Fractal Grid, Airports Council International, Amazon Web Services, Beyond Now, Cabinet Office/UK Government HMG, CloudBlue, Cloudsense, Digital Elite, Digital Twin Consortium, Etisalat, IoT Lab, IOTA, Maxbyte, Mvine, NTT, Rockport Software, STC, Telenor, TELUS, UBIqube, Urban-Air Port, Verizon, Vodafone.

DBM is a democratic consortium of organizations who have partnered together under a TM Forum “Catalyst project” to explore and productize techniques to enable companies to partner and deliver secure “mass customized” Industry 4.0 and Smart X projects as solutions – “Anything as a Service”. The DBM work has determined and tested repeatable patterns and end-to-end consortium automation enabling the easy selection of complex solutions in a shopping cart, multi-sourced from a “plug-&-play” ecosystem of business partners leveraging zero touch techniques (right from shopping cart to activation – password free) to deliver secure trusted endpoints and secure in-life managed solutions for millions of secure endpoints, enabling industry 4.0 and smart X solution outcomes.
DBM has brought together Communication Service Providers, SIs, Cloud players, Hyperscalers, Product & Service players, large and small from multiple industries across the globe. It has demonstrated how Zero Touch and secure frictionless partner collaboration brings a different perspective to address complex industry challenges.
DBM Phase 1 – 3 can be found here: https://dbm4.net/
DBM Phase 4 can be found here: https://myaccount.tmforum.org/networks/21-0-154/index.html

About TM Forum
TM Forum is an association of over 850 member companies, which include 10 of the world’s top 10 network and communications providers and stretch across 180 countries. Our members tap into each other’s collective experiences and abilities to collaboratively solve complex industry-wide challenges, deploy new services, and create technology breakthroughs to accelerate change. We help communications service providers (CSPs) and their suppliers to digitally transform and thrive in the digital era. We do this by providing an open, collaborative environment and practical support which enables CSPs and suppliers to rapidly transform their business operations, IT systems and ecosystems to capitalize on the opportunities presented in a rapidly evolving digital world. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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