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The days when telecom was all about a fixed line phone, few cables and some back end IT support have changed. A lot of transition is being witnessed in the OSS/BSS space. Today mobile is not just a wireless instrument for talking, it has been evolving with value added services and now VoIP has been generating revenue for the industry.

Over the past few years the OSS/BSS segment has undergone many changes and is being regarded critical to the industry only since the past couple of years. The OSS/BSS structure is changing as per the telecom industry dynamics and subscriber preferences. The roll of OSS/BSS has become critical for revenue management. It is time that operators manage to find a solution with next generation OSS/BSS. Operators are looking at better avenues for revenue generation. OSS/BSS solutions that can handle billing and customer acquisition for multiple services on a single platform are much in demand. Convergence is the key area of lookout for the entire industry.

OSS/BBS is more complicated and technical from its earlier ways of deployments. But over a period of time it helps reduce operator's opex and capex. Operators now have to manage a single system rather than several standalone systems as they have been doing-this is its biggest advantage in bringing down costs. Operators are looking at immense flexibility through next generation OSS/BSS, which would bring in better revenue streams. At the access network layer the ability to be faster, complying with business needs is a requirement as costs escalate.

Newer Frontier
What was previously a vertical offering tower is now being transformed into a horizontal offering mode. Fixed telephony and Internet was the basis of telecom infrastructure. Today telecom is an entire framework with many sub frames. The demands and deliverables are high.

The underlying telecom infrastructure is changing. Newer dimensions are coming in the form of next generation networks. What were circuit switches have now become packets. 3G and VAS together would support a lot of applications. Integration of soft switches with media gateways will give desired flexibility. Faster streaming of video and data over networks on a packet based format is being sought after by operators.

With ARPUs coming down and expected to come down even more with increasing rural penetration, perhaps the only area that remains unnerved is the VAS segment. Operators today are providing VAS with huge expectations. Experts say 3G would further bring a lot of revenue for telcos. Internet-based services over the mobile will be the driving force of businesses in the coming days.

On a broader note, better bandwidth would result in bigger businesses. Operators can look at charging for the data upload or download rather than nature of connection. Voice will be provided through VoIP service, data will move on secured VPN tunnels and streaming audio/video will flow on the same channels with the help of real time protocols. Also, service providers would offer content and services like video on demand, IPTV, games, advertisement, social network, SMS/MMS, video mail, webcast, videoconference, etc.

Experts panel

Ajay Jain, director, telecom & mobility practice, Perot Systems Amajit Gupta, director, communications sector, Microsoft India Raghu Prasad, senior director, communications global business unit, Oracle APAC & Japan Neeraj Vyas, assistant vice president, Aricent Nikhil Jain, director and COO, Elitecore Technologies Rajeev Singhal, CIO, IDC, Reliance Communications Abhijit Lahiri, VP & global head BSS/OSS SI, MS & consulting, Tech Mahindra Sethumadhavan Srinivasan, deputy director, network strategy & marketing, Huawei APAC Raghu Ramandhan, regional sales director, Asia Intec Systems

Managed Services
Another trend that the OSS/BSS segment is experiencing is offering of managed services. With much complexity involved in the current offerings, operators have started outsourcing their OSS/BSS solutions to OSS/BSS vendors. By doing this enterprises are looking at saving a lot of effort in managing, thereby focusing on the core functioning of the enterprise.

Managed services across the complete OSS/BSS application value chain is already quite prevalent and in some cases the norm. This in turn has driven demands for SI/managed service providers and more for end-to-end vendors of BSS/OSS who have first hand expertise. They are required to manage network deployment and necessary back-end systems to support quick launch of services.

It is expected that in the next five years the OSS CAGR would be somewhere between 8% and 12%. Similarly, the BSS CAGR would be between 4% and 8%. But looking at the downturn, countries like the UK and USA are seeing a negative growth. Growth rates may be revised, at least for 2009-10.

The silver lining is that the telecom sector is expected to grow in the emerging markets. It is expected that there will be 300 mn new subscribers by 2010. However, for operators this is a challenging year as vanilla services will become a commodity, normal voice calls will see price clash, and operators will need to adopt creative and innovative services to keep the customer engaged.

OSS/BSS architecture would allow integration.

Looking at the coming years we hope that with technologies, platforms and applications like consolidation, convergence, VAS, WiMax, etc, there will growth in the OSS/BSS segment.

Though there are a few growth barriers. The Indian telecom industry, particular GSM operators, does not have much legacy infrastructure, modern networks. Delay in implementations is another shortfall. One big example is 3G.

It is critical to look out toward better revenues through cost optimization. This will help the industry to sail smoothly through the present slowdown.

Sunny Sen
sunnys@cybermedia.co.inc

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