TM Forum Launches Satellite Initiative to Tackle Telco Integration Challenge
TM Forum is launching a new Open Digital Architecture (ODA) for Satellite project aimed at addressing one of the biggest barriers to large-scale satellite adoption - integration with terrestrial networks.
The initiative is bringing together 16 companies from across the global telecoms and satellite ecosystems, including Airbus, Vodacom, Terrestar Solutions, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Netcracker and Rakuten, to create common frameworks for how satellite and terrestrial networks interact, exchange data and deliver services.
While satellite connectivity is widely expected to become a multi-billion-dollar market over the coming decade, operators still face significant operational hurdles. Billing systems, customer management platforms, service orchestration tools and network operations have traditionally been built for separate industries, making integration slow, expensive and difficult to scale.
Rather than focusing on the space segment itself, the project is targeting the business and operational layers that sit behind services with the goal of creating standardised operating models, APIs and governance frameworks that allow satellite operators and mobile network operators to work together more seamlessly.
TM Forum plans to showcase the ODA for Satellite framework at its forthcoming DTW Ignite 2026 event in Copenhagen, including demonstrations of how standardised architectures could support future satellite-as-a-service business models and AI-driven network operations.