DLA Piper has been appointed to advise the ITW (International Telecoms Week) Global Leaders' Forum (GLF) on the launch of a special purpose vehicle that will develop a live, blockchain-based platform. The purpose of the platform, known as the Communications Blockchain Network (CBN), is to revolutionise the wholesale telecoms sector's commercial settlement infrastructure. It is expected to go live in the coming months and will be governed by a collaborative structure.

The GLF will partner with leading technology providers to develop the reference architecture and support the creation of an open ecosystem for both ICT service providers and technology vendors. The goal of the CBN platform is to create a collaborative, industry-wide framework to avoid fragmentation and help push the adoption of automated settlement applications. The aim is to replace the current manual invoice settlement systems for wholesale telecoms services with an automated blockchain-based solution which is not tied to one particular vendor. The GLF believes this will have significant value as it will enable the replacement of the current bilateral settlement processes (which can take weeks or months to resolve) with a far superior and quicker technology.

The London-based DLA Piper team appointed to advise the GLF consists of IPT partner Mike Conradi and Corporate partner Jon Kenworthy.

Mike Conradi said, "This is an exciting development for the industry and one which has the potential to be transformative for this critical section of the telecoms sector. We at DLA Piper are delighted to be assisting with the ground-breaking development".