Telecom Technologies // OSS Transformation - Enable Your Network and Your Services

Telecom Technologies

The communication industry is undergoing a major transformation. While voice services remain a strong source of revenue for some operators, the transition to primarily data traffic has been relatively swift. With this has come the emergence of a new set of technologies adopted by the industry worldwide.

Demand for ever higher data speeds require the replacement of copper wires with fiber and mobile network upgrades to 3G and LTE. The rapid adoption of IP has led to exhaustion of address space, leading to the emergence of IPv6 and Ethernet. Voice services, formerly managed by central switches are slowly being replaced by an IMS architecture.

Alongside these changes, the OSS required to plan, fulfill and manage these Next Generation Networks must also evolve. While Erlangs may no longer be the main benchmark to dimensioning networks using these new technologies, capacity management remains critical to ensure that the network is adequately sized to meet demand.

Of the many disruptions across the industry, perhaps the most widely affecting are:

What is OSS?

An Operational Support System, or OSS for short, generally refers to the backoffice computer systems that plan and manage communications networks. A good OSS enables service providers to roll out new technologies and services quickly and efficiently, understand how the network is performing and resolve faults or capacity bottlenecks promptly.

What is OSS Transformation?

OSS Transformation is a program to reform and streamline the many hundreds of disparate OSS systems into an integrated solution, updating both the business processes and the software systems involved. This enables more rapid introduction and fulfilment of new services, delivering a much more responsive and effective customer experience at lower cost.

Our Active Inventory Vision

Our vision is that the technical inventory becomes the heart of the network operation. Complete, accurate and up-to-date technical information about every equipment, circuit and logical assignment can be used by many parts of the organization, whether installing equipment onsite or dealing with customer enquiries.

Resource Management versus Inventory

Service Order Management

Wherever the order originates, whether by self service or a customer agent, service order management decomposes each one into a sequence of interdependent tasks, orchestrating their completion across one or more fulfillment systems. Orders may involve both manual and automated tasks such as engineer site visits, equipment provisioning and configuration.

Network Planning and Design

You can’t afford to waste any of the substantial investments made in new network equipment. Whether you’re launching new technologies, upgrading capacity or changing equipment suppliers, accurate and detailed network design is essential. Neither can you delay expansion – bottlenecks result in poor service to customers and wastage of other network assets. A fine balance is called for in order to meet rapidly growing and changing traffic demands.

Service Fulfillment

Rapid introduction of new services is often hampered by legacy back-office systems. Service fulfillment offerings help to automate the fulfillment process for delivering next-generation technologies such as DSL, voice over IP, Ethernet and Virtual Private Network (VPN). It handles all the business and technical processes involved in managing each customer order in an environment where a start, stop or change of any service is a complex task.

Service Assurance

Maintaining and improving service quality for customers is becoming more important as service providers strive to differentiate. Conducting an impact analysis before prioritizing and responding to outages quickly and effectively is paramount. Being able to identify and communicate with customers affected by network faults and planned maintenance is also important.

FTTx

As demand for data capacity continues to go through the roof, service providers are realizing that they need to deploy wireline access networks with massive bandwidth in order to compete. And that means rolling out fiber networks. But seeing as it costs about $2,000 per subscriber to deliver fiber to the home connectivity, it’s expensive and the payback period is too long.

LTE

High speed, low latency and increased capacity are all promised by this emerging 4G mobile technology which will expand the range of services, devices and applications used wirelessly. But LTE isn’t simply an incremental step in radio interface design. Architectural changes towards a flatter, self-organising network have significant impact on how the new technology will be planned and managed.

Ethernet

Ethernet has become the dominant and ubiquitous transmission technology for high speed data, whether in the home, office or carrier network. Ethernet technology bring improved manageability and scalability for transporting both variable and constant bit-rate services. As demand grows for business services based on Ethernet networks, service providers know they have to deliver these services quickly.

IP

There’s no doubt that IP (Internet Protocol) has become the ubiquitous data networking protocol that powers the world-wide internet. It has proved highly scalable from residential up to corporate Gigabit speeds. But as traffic increases and more demanding services such as video take hold, the “best effort” capacity management approach isn’t good enough. More rigorous network engineering is essential for future success.

Data Capacity Crunch

The rapid growth of mobile data traffic is well documented. New faster technologies such as 3.5G and 4G promise higher speeds and a better user experience but can’t meet projected traffic demands on their own. Individual departments within service providers can’t deal with this issue on their own – a holistic approach is required which combines several strategies implemented in a coordinated manner across the business.

Data Capacity Crunch Videos

Time to Market

Consumers (and businesses) have become much more demanding. We expect new services and technologies to be introduced quickly. Those which we buy should be available for immediate use, working correctly first time every time. We surveyed the industry to find out the key issues and how Time to Market has become even more important.

Time to Market - Full Survey Results

OSS Transformation

How quickly is the industry adopting OSS transformation? Are they choosing a “big bang” or a more evolutionary approach? An independent research report provides deep insight into the current state of the industry and the choices being made.

Telecom Business Model Transformation

Will today's Communication Service Providers need to transform their business models to accompany technology and industry changes? Is the argument that providers are heading for a grim bit-pipe future overstated? To find out what the business models of the future might be, the Economist Intelligence Unit spoke to prominent leaders and drivers in the industry and determine alternative strategic options.