Even as political pundits begin deliberating on the not-so-unpredictable outcome of the 14th general elections, telecom subscribers in the country have already announced their mandate clear and loud: let the dominance of fixed-line services draw to an end, and let mobile take over. It’s only a matter of time now, perhaps a few more months, that mobile subscribers will outnumber fixed-line subscribers.

The promise of freedom—and not of coverage, quality-of-service, et al—is the key force that’s helping mobile do the magic crossover. Rising competition, falling prices, and ever-new network rollouts only duly manifest the phenomenon.…

So far carriers have found it good to ride the popularity wave, wonderful in fact. But as the market matures to the next level, one senses the need to deliver not just basic mobility, but also newer services, preferably on the fly.

As that happens, the role of OSS/BSS systems as engines of service delivery, billing, fraud management, and network management becomes critical. Carriers are not oblivious of the impending need and will want to be free of the shackles of the legacy OSS/BSS systems that are genetically disinclined to innovative service provisioning.

More than anything else, telcos today want to use OSS/BSS solutions as differentiators in the game of competition. Consequently, the new areas that have emerged or some old areas that have been given a boost are service level management, revenue assurance, and inventory management. These solutions are expected to take data from the network, leverage the capabilities of each other and present a holistic picture of the network, and improve the top line, bottom line and quality of service of the operators. OSS/BSS solutions are all set to take the centerstage from now on.

Technology Trends
Contemporary solutions are equipped with high-quality, robust and scalable components. Their speed and reliability in handling large volumes of complex processing would certainly have been impossible for legacy systems of yesteryears. They use proven technologies with a futuristic design. They also use open standards, middleware and APIs to smoothly integrate with other business components. It is very easy for an independent software vendor (ISV) or a partner application service providers (ASP) to interact with billing products using middleware or APIs.

Vendors are shifting towards evolved, modular and flexible architectures that comprise a host of modules for performing various functions. However, as technological developments continue to be driven by market needs, the solution offerings constantly evolve and adapt to the ever-capricious OSS/BSS requirements.

l Towards Centralized Systems: Carriers are fast moving from a circle-centric approach to centralized billing systems, with most of the large operators having already taken the plunge. Earlier, telcos were focused on building silos within their networks with respect to operations and processes. This spiraled into huge interoperability issues across the network, leading to lack of understanding of the business and usage of data across the operation. Telcos seem to have woken up to the problem and are making efforts to sweat as many of their network assets as possible as they address the interoperability issues. This means that the shift is towards platform type solutions (and not point solutions anymore) so as to address many problems on a network-wide basis.

This necessitates a large centralized infrastructure with a disaster recovery option and a robust billing platform.

The last few months have also seen the emergence of IUC regime. To cater to the requirements of this, a good interconnect solution becomes mandatory.

l Convergent Solutions: One of the biggest challenges for service providers in billing customers has been in the area of data services and value-added services. While some SPs have been charging an ad-hoc amount, others are grappling with introducing new value-added services, other than P2P SMS and MMS. A lot has been discussed in the last few months on convergent solutions for billing to cater to both postpaid and prepaid services. The most active proponents of this type of solution have been the major vendors.

l More Focus on Revenue Assurance: On the fraud management part of BSS, the trend is clearly to expand the scope of the fraud management solution to encompass a wider scope of revenue assurance. Most of the SPs are looking at ways and means of not only clamping fraud but also stopping leakages from whichever source it is emanating. A critical requirement of such a solution is the capability of rating call data records (CDRs) and then taking corrective actions. A typical revenue assurance solution is customized using existing or new fraud management solution, a BI solution that provides a 360-degree view of the customer and a robust mediation system, which is the glue to interact with the various components of the enterprise.

l Service Quality Management: On the OSS front, clearly the standard fault management solution is becoming the baseline on which the rest of the solutions will be built. While large operators are looking at an integrated services management (ISM) type of environment, others are looking at performance management, inventory management, and configuration management type of solutions. With subscribers having a surfeit of SPs to choose from, quality of service is becoming a key differentiator of services being provided. Thus, the requirement for service quality management (SQM) is becoming all the more necessary. There are some innovative solutions from some key vendors in this area.

Another requirement that has come up in the last few months is the creation of a centralized network operating center (NOC) to manage the telecom environment as well as the data environment from the same center. This becomes a very effective tool for management when the overlaying technology on which the solution is underpinned supports both the IP network as well as the SS7-based telecom equipment and switches.