Industry alliance TM Forum and Accenture have launched a multi-year Trustworthy AI program for the telecom industry, including what they call the sector's first AI trust certification. The announcement was made on October 6.The program aims to help telecom companies deploy autonomous operations with verifiable evidence that AI agents and their decisions are trustworthy. It will deliver a certification measuring governance maturity, workforce readiness and operational accountability.The move responds to a wide trust gap found in TM Forum research. While 72 per cent of telecom providers believe their artificial intelligence is trustworthy, only 14 per cent can prove it. The certification is meant to turn AI trust from a policy aspiration into a measurable operational capability.Guy Lupo, executive vice-president of AI and data at TM Forum, said trustworthiness becomes operational only when every principle is backed by continuous, verifiable evidence. Accenture's Arnab Chakraborty said agentic AI marks a fundamental shift from AI supporting decisions to AI making decisions. The program will run through TM Forum's collaboration studios.