Most communications service providers (CSPs) now have plenty of automation. What they often lack is autonomy that holds together across the business. Intent is captured in one system, assurance runs in another, and service management sits somewhere else again. The result is a gap between what the commercial team sells and what operations can reliably deliver.

The TM Forum Moonshot Catalyst Autonomy accelerated: Connected intelligence for reliable agentic operations, Phase III set out to close that gap. Championed by Telenor and developed with Nokia, Qvantel, Infosys and BMC Helix, the project showed how connected intelligence can link business intent, service operations, network assurance and customer experience into one governed loop.

From isolated automation to connected autonomy

Selling 5G standalone slices with edge AI is not only a network automation problem. A CSP needs to know whether it can sell a service, whether it can deliver it, and at what price, before it commits to a customer. That requires BSS, service management, network operations and customer experience to share context and act together.

Connected intelligence brings together intent, trusted data, observability, knowledge graphs, agentic reasoning and closed-loop automation across the business, service and resource domains.

The stadium scenario

The team built its demonstration around a major stadium event. The CSP sells and delivers a 5G AI slice with edge capabilities to support AI glasses, live streaming and low-latency fan experiences. It is packaged as a B2B offer combining guaranteed connectivity, edge intelligence and service assurance.

The journey starts with agentic lead generation, negotiation and intent probing, then moves into autonomous service qualification and fulfilment. Once the slice is live, AI analytics monitor the service, flag risks and predict incidents. Agentic AI then coordinates decisions and closed-loop actions across incidents, problems and changes.

Where service management fits

Each participant covered a part of the chain. Qvantel handled AI-assisted selling and customer intent capture. Nokia covered probing, fulfilment and closed-loop remediation where policy allows. BMC Helix provided the service management layer, receiving correlated incidents, carrying out telco impact analysis and applying agentic AI so that every action becomes an auditable ticket or task.

That handoff matters. When quality drops during a live event, assurance has to restore the customer experience quickly, while service management takes care of dispatch, change approval, SLA tracking and verified resolution. The Catalyst champions validated these assurance-to-service-management handoffs as part of the stadium scenario.

Glass-box agents and governance

Trust is central to the design. A glass-box approach lets operators see what an agent recommends, why it is recommending it, and which data it used, before approving or executing an action. Policy guardrails, human-in-the-loop controls and a common data foundation connect each decision to its business, security and customer experience impact.

Built on TM Forum standards

The solution uses TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) principles, Open APIs and autonomous networks assets. These include TMF921 for intent, alongside TMF633, TMF645, TMF639 and TMF638 for service discovery, qualification, inventory and slice attachment. The team reports that working from shared standards reduced integration and testing effort and makes the approach easier to repeat in multivendor environments.

The outcomes

The project points to up to 90% faster time to market for new services and up to 30% cost reduction as expected benefits. In the assurance path, the team demonstrated a 96% reduction in mean time to detect and an 83% reduction in mean time to repair. Further expected benefits include faster service onboarding, fewer service failures and lower OPEX.

At DTW Ignite 2026, the Catalyst was a top-five finalist in the Moonshot Attendees’ Choice category and a finalist for the Best Moonshot Autonomous Networks Challenge Award.

Source: TM Forum Inform. Read about BMC Helix’s role in this and its second Catalyst in BMC Helix ServiceOps at DTW Ignite 2026.