How OSS can Future-Proof Telecom Networks
With telecom operators looking at a co-existence of different communication technologies, they are looking up to OSS/BSS solutions in terms of future-proofing their networks while they engage in transformation of their core network architecture and widespread adoption of technologies such as long term evolution.
In such a complex scenario, the biggest challenge for the industry is to develop business support software solutions that would enable operators to identify sources of downtime and address their challenges, isolate the performance of each network component and track rich media streaming services. All this analysis can also pave way to enhancing revenue generation for the operators.
According to Dhaval Vora, VP, Product Management, Elitecore Technologies, the O/BSS systems are evolving to achieve unified view of customers for voice, video and data services across multiple devices, rapidly adapt and respond to unpredictable changes in the business climate, lower the overall cost of operations and reduce subscriber churn.
“The next-generation, convergent O/BSS systems can support multi-vendor interoperability and ensure easy integration with third party systems such as wholesale application and content/OTT providers. It possesses the ability to quickly react to new business models and opportunities – Family Plans/Shared wallet, Multi-device plans, new business areas (e.g. security, M2M, e-Health); Policy-based Offerings in demand today- Tiered Fair Access Policy (FAP), Family/Parental Control and Enterprise Control plans,” he adds on.
OSS/BSS is now increasingly being deployed as a differentiating tool by telecom operators to maintain a competitive edge The growth in the telecom industry is being driven by service providers’ inching towards convergence to provide new varied services (voice, data, video, triple play etc.) with one single point of contact and achieving a single view of the services that are opted by a customer.
“Mobile Network Operator (MNO) and ISPs enthusiasm for 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) can be found with aggressive network roll-outs in major markets across the globe. There is renewed focus on personalization which builds the relationship between an operator and its subscribers, and offer customers a wide range of personalized services and applications with increased focus on add on package/applications selling and customer’s choice of plans,” he explains.
The Competitive Landscape
As many experts in the industry put it, the Indian OSS/BSS market is moving towards exponential growth. This is primarily driven by operators need to incorporate next generation technologies such as 4G LTE.
Players such as Amdocs, Subex, Elitecore, Comptel, Comverse, Oracle, Alepo and Tech Mahindra etc are creating innovative OSS/BSS solutions for operators. in addition to this, there are new entrants such as
Driven by intense competition in the telecom space and increased consumer needs for flexibility in pricing/plans, majority of Operators and ISPs are having a number of expectations from their O/BSS vendors including an ability to upgrade their existing platform to create differentiated offerings, achieving greater transparency in billing and charging, supporting geographical roll-outs with quick time-to-market solutions and providing third party OTT/Content services for the customers.
At the same time, operators are under pressure to reduce margins while sharing revenue with third-party service providers, and to make a shift from delivering basic communication services to high-value personalized one.
“The key need for OSS/BSS vendors in today’s dynamic market is to adapt quickly to their solutions for meeting the growing customer needs and helping operators transform their business models for next-generation services. With the growth of data services, the telecom sector is set to witness fast-paced innovations similar to what the internet segment saw in the past decade which will drive continued development of real-time OSS/BSS solutions. Elitecore offers competitive edge as compared to other Billing vendors in the market as most of competitors don’t have the complete stack or use 3rd party/ partner offering, hence increases integration cost and deployment time,” Vora from Elitecore adds on.
Further, to help telecom operators gain an edge over their competitors, vendors need to offer OSS and BSS solutions that would help operators scale their offerings quickly while at the same time deliver better quality of service.
Talking about today’s OSS/BSS technology scenario, Dan Stern, VP Sales, Alepo Technologies, explains, with the current pace of innovation, an operator OSS/BSS should be highly flexible to be able to offer new services quickly. And hence, more and more operators are looking at ease of operations and generic, GUI driven, extensible OSS/BSS solutions that can deliver ease of management and flexibility.
“Generic and GUI driven solution means that such OSS platform can be configured through the product GUI. So if an operator wants to launch a new service. They can create the commercial and technical service from the GUI itself, no need for customization. Defining service parameters – whether customer selected ones, fetched from database ones, retrieved from third party ones – is all GUI driven. Manual ones or automated one, creating provisioning service scripts, all is achieved through the GUI,” he adds on.
