Creating digital identity and business process solutions of the future.

Currently, organizations, governments and corporations often take the part of trusted intermediaries in many processes. The dependency on those intermediaries often leads to complex processes, additional cost, lack of control and inefficiencies. By distributing the control and authority over data among multiple players, we can make intermediaries obsolete. This leads to more security, a higher trust level, cost savings and efficiency. For example, instead of having to involve a notary into a legal transaction, the participating parties can close a deal bi-directly, without losing the layer of trust and security, as the data can be recorded immutably on a shared digital ledger.

We believe in creating solutions that allow flexibility gains and increased security levels, while simultaneously reducing complexity. At the same time, we are preparing for a world where services matter more than physical assets and where processes are fully digital and seamless. In addition, if processes between multiple parties are to be automatized in the future, then a common, trusted layer for the data that is being exchanged is an absolute requirement, and distributed ledger technologies can provide just that. Working in this area requires strong partnerships, so for example, our group is working with industry standardization bodies like GSMA on new solutions for inter-carrier wholesale processes, together with other major operators.

At the same time, we maintain strong links to our own Telekom IT department and also to our partners from academia, for example the SNET team of TU Berlin. Major applied use cases that we think will be disrupted by this new technology are digital identities, digital business processes, digital asset management and crypto-economics. At T-Labs, we aim to look at technology in context, i.e. developing legal frameworks, economic models, use cases, and governance structures.