At present there is a divide within the digital divide when it comes to exploiting Operations Support Systems in the developing markets. TTI-Telecom’s Avner Amran urges the emerging countries to catch up and benefit accordingly.

Operations Support Systems (OSS) will improve efficiency and improve service quality, in the opinion of Avner Amran, VP Marketing and Business Development, TTI-Telecom. Here he explains why OSS is an idea whose time has come to help bridge the digital divide.

There are a number of ways in which industry players and observers measure the gap between developed and developing communications markets. Very often the disparity is viewed in terms of market saturation, rural area coverage, or other market data regarding hardware and physical infrastructure. However, other measures of this gap, such as service quality and overall efficiency, receive far less attention than they deserve. Issues of coverage and distribution are indeed important, and the relative importance of these issues varies, depending on the individual characteristics of various markets. It is fair to say that in general, where efficiency and QoS are concerned, network operators in developing markets tend to underestimate both the value of these issues and the ease with which they can be addressed.

One of the primary solutions for operational efficiency and service quality seen among the service providers of more developed markets is the use of Operations Support Systems (OSS). More commonly, we are seeing the deployment of Next-Generation OSS (NGOSS), allowing operators to manage performance and QoS over today's converging networks. This is a solution ideally suited for developing markets as well. Yet OSS seems to be surprisingly absent from networks in these regions.

How can OSS help?

For many in developing telecoms investment in OSS can be a "tough sell" in the budgeting process or company politics. Funding a new cable or base station can provide a physical marker of the network’s expansion, and additional revenue can be predicted in terms of additional potential customers.

The returns on investment in OSS can sometimes be more difficult to quantify. While additional infrastructure can increase the customer base by moving into identifiable new markets, service assurance increases the customer base by reducing churn and positioning against competitors in current markets. In addition, while additional infrastructure can improve profits through increased revenue, OSS improves profits by reducing costs. The benefits of OSS may be less visible or predictable but they have the potential to solve a number of problems that are arising among developing telecom markets recently and in the near future.

Currently, there is some level of OSS deployed in developing markets, but it is very rudimentary and compartmentalised. Each segment of the network, or each vendor's equipment, is often covered by a separate management system, with no direct communication between them. This model is a very difficult and costly way to monitor and operate a network. A network operator can have hundreds of alarms being set off by a variety of network elements, with the root-cause not always readily identifiable. For example, a cut fibre can trigger switching alarms. Without direct communication between the various management systems the root-cause analysis would have to be conducted manually. In this case, it could take network engineers hours of work examining the switching systems, before discovering that the root-cause lies elsewhere.

The more developed telecom markets were once in this situation as well but they have since adopted more advanced and versatile OSS that provides a unified view of the network and enhanced fault management capabilities, among other benefits. For example, these systems have the capability to automatically trigger the trouble ticketing process based on a comprehensive root-cause analysis. As a result, in markets like Western Europe a network fault that once took days to track down across various network elements can now be identified and corrected within minutes, if not shorter.

In developing markets still operating on the older model, this same network fault will still take days to repair. During this time, the users' inability to access the network will translate into lost revenue, not to mention the human resource costs of spending days to manually locate the fault.

Fault management in particular is one area of OSS from which developing telecoms stand to gain substantially. Even beyond issues of service quality and market share, there are more direct financial benefits to be gained. An up-to-date fault management system can provide a unified network view and drastically reduce the time and resources required to keep the network functioning.

OSS can help tackle the impending challenges

Other characteristics particular to developing markets further exacerbate the need for modern OSS. One of these conditions is the greater importance of rural areas, particularly as it this factor relates to the proportion of wireless infrastructure, as compared with wireline.

Developed countries tend to have vast fixed networks already in place, which in general are physically more secure in terms of faults. However, wireless service can be more vulnerable to performance faults for a variety of reasons; even weather can influence signal quality: with developing telecom providers’ increasing reliance on wireless, their vulnerability to faults increases as well.

Another such factor is the different set of market dynamics, which are changing more quickly than in developed countries. In developed countries there may be higher rates of churn and more advanced service rollouts, but overall the market saturation has stabilised. In developing countries, the overall growth rate of subscribers and market saturation is still very high. As a result, both the overall size and complexity of the networks, in addition to the rate of growth itself, have reached a point in which overwhelm the legacy management systems in place over these networks.

Increased performance management capabilities are a necessary step in order for developing telecoms to provide a quality of network performance on a level to which consumers are accustomed in developed markets, allowing these service providers to become more competitive as well. Fuelled by the competitive pressures of the developed markets, the very nature of service assurance has shifted, moving beyond a reactive fault management, to a more proactive service assurance and fulfilment. The leading service assurance vendors have begun offering solutions that not only identify faults quickly, but that can even anticipate service degradation.

In fact, there are solutions with the capability to recommend, or even automatically implement, corrective steps to maintain the consumers' service quality before it is even affected. These solutions have been more popular among the networks of developed markets, where QoS and minimising churn are major issues, but they have the potential to achieve the same service impact in developing markets as well.

Moving forward

It is difficult to make a blanket statement covering all developing markets, but for the most part it seems networks are overcoming the obstacles to properly taking advantage of OSS. In some cases, part of the issue is simply the process of becoming more familiar with OSS.

The network operators of the developed markets once operated on a level of OSS currently present in developing markets. They did not move from that position to today's deployment of advanced NGOSS in one single step. Rather, they gradually shifted from basic compartmentalised OSS to a single and universal OSS layer and from there to today's array of specialised and advanced NGOSS products.

However, that was not necessarily a conscious decision, but rather it just kept pace with the development of OSS. Today there is no reason for developing telecoms to repeat that long process; in most cases it would be possible to skip ahead and immediately adopt the most effective solutions available.

In fact, the telecoms of some developing areas who have started from “green fields” in their infrastructure development have indeed begun their OSS deployments with the most advanced solutions available, as we have seen, for example, in some APAC countries. However, many network operators are more comfortable starting with just a fault or performance management OSS product, and deciding the best way to proceed after this experience.

A great example of this approach can be seen in the network operators of the former Soviet Union. They are often considered to be "developing," but in truth they are a step ahead – certainly in regard to the quantity of wireline infrastructure in place. This creates a separate challenge but it is one which they have begun to answer with OSS solutions. Extending their coverage areas is still important but they are also faced with the task of organising and running the vast wireline networks already in their possession. Lately they have begun to realise the value of modern OSS in improving the operation of their infrastructure, and many have increasingly been implementing modern fault management solutions over their networks. Mobile operators have been increasingly interested in performance management as well, as that sector has begun to see competition grow at a faster rate than among fixed networks.

Close the OSS divide

There is a clear gap between developed and developing telecom markets in the level of OSS deployed over their networks. This further contributes to the regional disparity in terms of the service quality enjoyed by users, and efficiency of network operation. By raising the “OSS-awareness” of network operators in these parts of the world, they will be able to take advantage of these tools and help bridge the gap.

Through reduced costs they will be better able to invest in other areas which they already view as a priority, and through a more unified and sophisticated approach to service assurance they will be able to offer much improved service to their market. Closing the gap in OSS is an important but surprisingly easy way to ensure that anybody with a network connection, in any region of the globe, will receive the highest quality service possible.

For more information contact TTI Telecom on www.tti-telecom.com