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By Neil Webb, S2NET
Carriers globally are embracing Next Generation Network (NGN) technologies as the key to delivering a wider range of exciting new content-rich communications services to their customers. NGN opens the door to new revenue streams, more attractive service bundles for consumers and reduced product costs through the use of common access and network technologies that potentially minimize costly network layers.
However in order to reap these benefits Communications Service Providers (CSPs) must overcome significant hurdles to profitably make the transition from their legacy infrastructure to an NGN environment. Common challenges experienced by CSPs
undertaking this exercise include constrained investment resources, the need to develop new business models and dealing with an inflexible OSS/BSS infrastructure. Add to this the fact that NGN technologies are not static
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An important step, along the service-oriented path, is to define products and therefore customer services ‘independently’ of the underlying network while utilizing network assets whether OGN or NGN. This allows products to be introduced early and persist as the technology underneath evolves.
The ‘service-independence’ can only be achieved if CSPs adopt a strategy which overcomes the limitations of the legacy provisioning systems that have evolved over time to accommodate a converged, network-wide handling of OGN and NGN resources.
Legacy OSS assets
Adopting a service-oriented model and provisioning convergence first requires an understanding of the current OSS/BSS environment. Traditionally, provisioning of services has had clear demarcation points within CSPs. It was driven by market segmentation such as consumer vs. business vs. mobile and tended
to mirror the
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but are continually upgraded and it is no wonder that many carriers are experiencing rising operational costs, limited new revenue flow and constantly moving deadlines.
The good news is that by utilizing their existing assets – the OGN and existing OSS/BSS infrastructure - CSPs can make the NGN transition profitably and in a managed and controlled manner.
Services ‘independent’ of the underlying network
One of the ways in which CSPs can achieve control and management of the OGN to NGN transition is to adopt a service-oriented approach. This approach masks the complexities of any particular technology and enables changes to network and IT infrastructure to be driven top-down and directly from business requirements.
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supporting network technology, e.g., voice vs. data vs. mobile. This has resulted in silos of OSS systems performing essentially the same business functions for different services.
These legacy OSS/BSS silos deliver the existing services and hold CSP’s most valuable assets (its customer and network inventory data – including multiple copies) and are not service-oriented. The redundancy of systems supporting data assets and business functions has resulted in high (and growing) costs of systems and technical resources and the inability to accommodate new service types or models. Additionally, in many cases, the underlying OSS is incapable of supporting NGN technology and, more importantly, new service models.
Achieving service independence from the underlying network requires CSPs to bridge
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