The UK’s fiber revolution is well underway with more than 16 million premises now passed by full-fiber infrastructure and over half the country able to access a gigabit-capable connection (Ofcom Connected Nations Report, 2025). Raw coverage is only part of the story though. Behind every fast, reliable broadband connection is a wholesale network operator responsible for keeping thousands of links running at peak performance, around the clock. This is the story of how one such operator turned to OpenNMS to meet that challenge head-on.
The Challenge: Meeting a Major ISP’s High Standards
An operator provides the fiber lines and they’re responsible for making sure everything works perfectly for the ISPs that rely on their network. With Internet outages costing the UK economy an estimated £1.4 billion in lost work hours in the past year (Uswitch, 2025) there is a lot at stake.
When a major national ISP recognized they had outgrown their homegrown tools and they needed enterprise-grade monitoring to meet their service level agreements, they turned to OpenNMS. They needed to ensure precise tracking for thousands of interfaces and delivering the precise 95th percentile link utilization metrics that are the industry-standard measure for wholesale fiber SLAs.
How OpenNMS Stepped In
A full-fiber access network generates significantly more performance data than an equivalent copper network—per-port diagnostics, optical power levels, and dense interface metrics all add up fast. We rolled out a solution built to handle that scale: 10,000 to 20,000 interfaces across core and edge routers, with metrics collected every five minutes. The goal? Give the operator the data they need, fast and reliably, so the ISP’s customers never miss a beat and auditing reports for SLAs don’t show erroneous results.
The Results: Reliable Monitoring, Happy Customers
Today, the operator’s ISP monitoring is live and working, with OpenNMS keeping constant watch on the performance of their network. The success of this project has opened the door to more collaboration and bigger monitoring ambitions, including next-generation metric streaming over IPFIX.
By the Numbers
Looking Ahead
OpenNMS helped the operator deliver on the ISP’s high expectations, and we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for more stories from the network edge!
