Delivering zero-touch broadband services across operator boundaries

Open-access telecom markets rely on close coordination between wholesale network providers and retail service providers. In Australia, for example, broadband services often span NBN’s wholesale infrastructure and TPG’s retail operations. This separation can create operational silos across provisioning, assurance and fault management, with fragmented processes, inconsistent data models and limited end-to-end visibility slowing service delivery and issue resolution.

The Catalyst demonstrates how autonomous operations can be achieved across the operational boundary between a wholesale network provider (NBN) and a retail service provider (TPG), a challenge that remainslargely unresolved in open-access broadband markets

The project demonstrates how CSPs can progress toward TM Forum Autonomous Networks Level 4, using closed-loop automation to assure service quality, demarcate faults and orchestrate remediation with minimal human intervention.

The challenge of cross-operator service delivery

In many markets, broadband services span multiple operators, each with its own infrastructure, systems and processes. As a result, service provisioning that should be near real time can take hours or days, while fault demarcation across the wholesale access network, retail network and customer premises equipment often depends on manual handoffs between care, NOC and network teams.

Misaligned data models and limited telemetry correlation across organizations add further complexity. According to the project team, 40–60% of relevant workflows still require manual effort, contributing to SLA breaches, higher OPEX and slower progress toward Dark NOC, or zero-touch, operations.

Enabling autonomous orchestration

AutoNetX introduces a cross-operator orchestration layer where service and assurance activities are expressed as high-level business intents and dynamically executed across domains. The platform uses real-time telemetry, events and service context to support proactive assurance, faster fault demarcation and automated responses.

A key enabler of the solution is REXI (Residential Experience Indicator), which translates both network and in-home performance data into actionable customer experience insights. By correlating service health, network conditions and Wi-Fi performance, REXI enables AutoNetX to prioritize interventions based on customer impact rather than isolated technical metrics.

The Catalyst validates this approach through three operational use cases:

• Proactive Churn Reduction uses customer experience intelligence, NBN service health information and network-level signals to identify high-risk customers and trigger proactive intervention before service degradation results in complaints or churn.
• Reactive Triage Improvement combines Agentic AI and Dark NOC principles to correlate data across wholesale and retail domains, enabling rapid fault demarcation and significantly reducing diagnosis and resolution times.
• Proactive Wi-Fi Experience Management continuously monitors in-home connectivity conditions to detect degradation early and automatically recommend or execute corrective actions before customers experience service issues.

Agentic AI supports dynamic decision-making and coordination across systems and organizational boundaries, helping the network observe conditions, reason over context, and execute actions. A unified cross-operator data model reduces information mismatches, while integration with existing AIOps, ITSM and OSS/BSS platforms helps the solution align with current operational environments.

Closing the loop

The solution is built around a continuous monitor, detect, decide, act and validate cycle. This closed-loop model enables systems to identify performance issues, determine the appropriate response, and trigger remediation without unnecessary manual intervention.

The Catalyst uses several TM Forum assets to structure and validate the approach, including the Autonomous Networks Framework and AN Levels Model, Autonomous Networks Reference Architecture, Level 4 High Value Scenarios, Intent Management Framework and TMF921 Intent Management API. It also uses Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs including TMF633 Service Catalog, TMF641 Service Order, TMF638 Service Inventory, TMF639 Resource Inventory, and TMF642 Alarm Management.

Delivering better outcomes

The project team expects AutoNetX to automate 70–80% of multi-operator workflows, reduce service activation time by 30–50%, cut manual operational effort by 40–60%, and reduce SLA breaches by 20–40%. It also aims to improve mean time to resolve by 30% and reduce order fallout by 30–50%, helping operators deliver services faster and more reliably.

For Mariano Galuzzi, Head of Service Operations Centre at TPG, the value of the Catalyst lies in tackling “one of telecom’s most persistent challenges — the fragmentation and inefficiency of multi-operator service delivery.” By making targeted assurance, triage and provisioning processes more autonomous, AutoNetX shows how CSPs can better protect customer experience while reducing operational complexity.

Beyond demonstrating technical feasibility, the Catalyst establishes a production-ready blueprint for autonomous operations across wholesale and retail environments, creating a clear pathway from proof of concept to real-world deployment.

Why it matters

For consumers and enterprises, the impact is a more proactive and reliable broadband experience, where issues are detected and resolved before they result in service disruption, complaints, or churn.

For network teams, it reduces manual workload and supports a shift from reactive operations to proactive, closed-loop assurance. For the wider industry, AutoNetX offers a standards-based blueprint for cross-operator automation in open-access markets globally.

As demand for broadband continues to grow, the ability to deliver seamless, high-quality services across complex ecosystems will become increasingly important. AutoNetX highlights how TM Forum assets, intent-based orchestration and agent-supported autonomy can help make zero-touch broadband operations achievable across wholesale and retail boundaries.