Wholesale broadband as a service: the future of service assurance – Phase III

Wholesale broadband evolves from connectivity to assured outcomes

This Catalyst shows how service and network provider companies can simplify wholesale broadband service assurance by standardizing APIs, harmonizing workflows and using automation to identify and resolve customer issues faster.

In wholesale broadband provisioning and customer lifecycle management, service providers often rely on multiple partners for fibre connectivity and related services. The challenge is that those partners frequently use different interfaces and different KPIs to report service quality on request. That makes it difficult to diagnose customer complaints in a structured, scalable way, especially when responsibility sits across service and network provider boundaries.

The Catalyst project, Wholesale broadband as a service: the future of service assurance – Phase III, addresses this by standardizing APIs and harmonizing workflows for fault handling, ticketing and testing. Using TM Forum Open APIs and ODA components, the project demonstrates how providers can automate root-cause identification and resolution of customer complaints. It also introduces an AI ticketing agent that can support more autonomous network operations over time.

The challenge of assuring wholesale services

Wholesale broadband service assurance is often slowed down by fragmented processes. Different wholesale partners expose different operational interfaces, provide different measures of service quality and handle testing in different ways. This makes fault diagnosis and complaint handling slower, more manual and more prone to disputes or repeated handoffs between organizations.

For service companies, that means longer repair cycles, repeated customer calls and a poorer experience. For network providers, it creates unnecessary operational effort and weakens the ability to manage service levels consistently. A more structured, standards-based approach is needed to troubleshoot issues across partners and resolve them faster.

A new model for service assurance

The project proposes a standardized model for wholesale broadband assurance built on TM Forum Open APIs and ODA components. It brings together product and service inventory, appointment management, service and product testing, workforce management and trouble ticketing to create a more consistent way to share information and coordinate action across partners.

By digitizing these interactions, the Catalyst replaces manual, bilateral processes with API-driven workflows for identifying faults, assessing service quality and fixing the root cause of customer complaints. A key part of this phase is the development of an AI ticketing agent, which helps show how standardized assurance processes can become an enabler for autonomous networks.

As one of the Champions, Steffen Krippner, Senior Manager OSS Fulfilment at Vodafone Group, puts it: “Through the Catalyst, we will demonstrate that wholesale broadband service assurance can be fundamentally simpler, faster, and more scalable when built on open standards. By standardizing fault, outage, service quality, and service testing interactions using TM Forum Open APIs, we replaced manual, bilateral processes with fully digitized, API-driven workflows. The result is a measurable reduction in fault resolution times, clearer ownership across network and service provider boundaries, and a significant decrease in operational effort. For our teams, this means fewer disputes, faster root-cause isolation, and more reliable SLA management. For our customers, it translates directly into improved service quality and faster issue resolution.”

From reactive operations to autonomous assurance

This phase moves assurance further toward automation by showing how ticketing and root-cause analysis can be handled in a more consistent, machine-driven way. Instead of relying on manual investigation across multiple interfaces, teams can work from standardized data and workflows that speed up diagnosis and resolution.

The expected benefits are significant: up to 50% cost efficiency when integrating new wholesale partners, a 30% increase in automation for root-cause analysis and customer ticket resolution, faster time to repair and fewer repeated calls. The result is clearer ownership across network and service provider boundaries, lower operational effort and more reliable SLA management.

Unlocking value beyond operations

The value of the project extends beyond faster fault handling. For service and network providers, it offers savings in implementations and operations. For customers, it improves service quality through faster issue resolution. For the industry, it demonstrates how open standards can simplify wholesale assurance and create a stronger foundation for autonomous network initiatives.

The Catalyst also contributes directly to TM Forum assets. The team is working closely with the TMF Wholesale Broadband Standardization project, also helping develop TMFC047 Party Problem Management, which does not yet exist, and supporting the ODA team on that component. That makes the project not only a proof point for implementation, but also a contribution to the standards needed for more interoperable assurance across the industry.

Measuring success

The impact of the solution is measured through a combination of operational and business outcomes, including:

• Up to 50% cost efficiency when integrating new wholesale partners
• 30% more automation in root-cause analysis and customer ticket resolution
• Faster fault resolution and time to repair across partner boundaries
• Improved service quality, customer experience and SLA management

These improvements demonstrate how intent-driven assurance can create tangible value across the wholesale value chain.

Wholesale broadband as a service: the future of service assurance – Phase III will be showcased as part of the DTW Ignite 2026 Catalyst program, demonstrating how intent-driven assurance can reshape wholesale broadband for the next generation of digital services.