While many service providers see no way out in terms of their vendors' control over their network and management system choices, there are some that are finding a way to dictate what types of OSSs and data formats they want to use.
Carriers like BT, Vodafone and Chunghwa increasingly put their requirements in RFPs to ensure they can integrate fragmented data across applications and network types. 'In the near future, we can no longer throw infinite amounts of manpower at integration projects,' says Victor Chiu, VP of the Telecom Laboratory of Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), the largest telecom provider and mobile operator in the Republic of China (Taiwan).
As one would expect, the company possesses an enormous maintenance department that runs different business processes for customized applications"”many of which grew out of older OSSs.
Rather than take a wait-and-see approach, Chunghwa forged ahead with an initiative for automatic fault management for trans-generation mobile network that completed in 2006.
'We decided to specify to our vendors what requirements we had for NGN and OSS/BSS, and they listened because they knew they could glean from what we accomplished in our very strong research lab,' explains Chiu. He attributes his lab's sophisticated work around integration to the use of NGOSS, which has become a companywide model for developing requirements.
'Because every OSS/BSS used for services like IPTV and unified messaging are based on a standard model, we've stopped a lot of the arguments and debates. We surveyed vendor solutions and decided internally that the only 'total' solution would come off a model with standard interfaces that would facilitate cross-company communication,' says Chiu.
For Chiu and others in the organization, the use of the SID (TM Forum Information Framework) and TM Forum Interface Program (namely the MTOSI interface) have become the key to bundling major applications quickly and efficiently. Entrenched in the development of a new NGOSS OSS platform, Hsin-Chieh Chao, CHT's associate researcher in development of mobile OSS, focuses on functions like fault management.
'We have strict performance criteria with new services. If something happens to a base station, we have to have it repaired within four hours,' notes Chao. That need has pushed CHT to work closely with Nokia, from whose OSS data is retrieved. 'We worked together to develop forwarding mechanisms using a JMI server,' says Chao, who believes JMS is more 'stable' than the traditional socket connection, as well as more flexible for implementing functions according to NGOSS methodology.
Because Nokia was willing to modify its system to support CHT's NGOSS initiative, the upgrade has moved along steadily. 'Now, regardless of GSM or WCDM or network type, messages pass through the JMS. That will help us to refine applications from OSS systems that are too big and too numerous,' says Chao. 'That is more important than ever as we turn our attention to oversees to other markets.'