The Indian telecom industry is fast evolving with the launch of next-generation services like 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA). These services have shifted the operators? focus towards quality of service, customer engagement and satisfaction. In this scenario, the importance of operating support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) has increased manyfold in an operator?s business cycle. In the coming years, the growing need for upgrading traditional systems, the increasing focus on customer satisfaction and differentiation in service offerings are likely to drive growth in the OSS/BSS segment. Amit Sachdeva, Telecom Practice, Ernst & Young, shares his views on the key trends in this industry, the impact of 3G and BWA services, and the challenges faced by the segment…
What are the key trends in the Indian OSS/BSS market?
? Telecom operators would expand their scope of services from basic voice and data offerings to innovative services that address the overall telecom needs of both consumers and enterprises. Service creation environments and service delivery platforms are being developed to match these trends.
? Leveraging information from different touchpoints and using it to improve employee productivity, empower customer service agents and drive channel productivity will enhance the overall capabilities of an organisation.
? Customer convergence will drive the BSS segment?s growth going forward. This would also help companies to retain valuable customers, and encourage users to avail of new services offered by operators. In an era of outsourcing and cloud computing, customer awareness would offer a competitive advantage to telecom operators.
? There is a need for product convergence to drive the transformation in ordering and billing platforms, which will be enabled through product bundling and cross-product discounting.
? Though telecom operators are not likely to leverage cloud computing for their OSS/BSS requirements in the near future, they would form strategic partnerships to offer billing and customer care services to their enterprise, and small and medium business customers.
? Infrastructure consolidation and virtualisation to set up ?green data centres? will also contribute to the growth of the OSS/BSS segment.
How important is the OSS/BSS segment for an operator?
OSS/BSS solutions enable critical processes of order completion as well as service provisioning, assurance and billing, and are, therefore, at the heart of telecom operations. Responsiveness, availability and accuracy of output are the key characteristics of OSS/BSS systems that enhance operator efficiency.
What has been the impact of 3G services on the OSS/BSS segment? What effect would long term evolution (LTE) have on the telecom industry?
While Indian operators were allocated 2×5 MHz spectrum in the 3G auction, most European operators received 2×15 MHz for roughly one-fifth of the total customer base in 2000. Given the shortage of 3G spectrum for Indian operators, it is likely that the industry will start to feel the pinch sooner than expected.
Moreover, average bandwidth consumption per user would increase by 5-10 times in the future, driven mainly by the increasing awareness and the reach of internet services.
Indian operators will face challenges in carrying this additional burden on their voice-centric networks, and will start looking at innovative technologies to prevent obsolescence and prolong their returns on investments in existing networks.
With increased data usage after the launch of 3G services and the expected LTE launch in the near term, the enterprise OSS/BSS solutions? capabilities would be enhanced in the following areas:
Content delivery platforms: These platforms would enable faster time to market and the widespread delivery of content across form factors. These are designed to deliver on the following principles:
? Any user ? A consistent and relevant user experience with the ability to choose and change the sensory mode
? Any device ? Device dependency intelligence for all device types
? Any network ? A convergent platform that supports services irrespective of the network type
? Any mode ? A multi-channel and multi-modal portal
? Any content ? A common content management system for rich media
? Any developer ? A web service-compliant architecture that supports the development of a rich partner ecosystem
Service delivery/service creation environment: It is the operational core of the content delivery/service delivery/triple-play and quad-play platforms. The service delivery/service creation environment is the foundation for future extension to new services such as triple play services. It houses the common elements required to deliver the service to the user (including subscribers, content providers and employees). Moreover, it provides the security, portal, device and content management infrastructure, which allows users to access services and avail of authorised management privileges. Service creation environments/service delivery environments also enable the abstraction of network interfaces to harness network capabilities (such as location, messaging and call control), thereby simplifying service creation and providing access to the worldwide internet developer community.
Network gateways: These provide network access and mechanisms through which content, applications and services are delivered to the subscriber.
Digital rights management: In a market where differentiation and value would be driven by content in the future, capabilities that protect content-based internet protocol and prevent unlawful distribution of content would enable more effective monetisation of content.
Transcoding: The delivery of the same content through multiple form factor devices (film trailers accessed through television, tablets, mobile devices and 70 mm screens) would require suitable repurposing of content, thereby enabling the delivery of digitised content in near real time across different kinds of form factor devices.
Online rating and charging platforms: OSS/BSS solutions would allow operators to rate and charge customers based on traffic/data usage.
What are the key issues and challenges for the OSS/BSS industry?
Earlier, there were clear distinctions between the roles of OSS and BSS, but now we have already moved to a stage where the overlap between the two domains is constantly increasing with growing integration points across service assurance and service management. Network configuration details are being pushed up to the BSS level for decision making, while service management processes push BSS decision making down, close to the network, to determine the right service to offer the customer.
Currently, Indian operators have disparate legacy networks that operate independently, each essential for day-to-day functions. This poses a key challenge in migrating to an integrated OSS/BSS platform. This is not only applicable to incumbents but also to the new service providers, who had to build several support systems in a short time.
However, with operators rolling out new services and maintaining multiple networks at the same time, the future challenges are bound to be more complex in nature. In India, this problem would be more pronounced as operators are planning to roll out LTE while also considering Wi-Max as a transitional technology to LTE-TDD, as the latter is still not commercially viable in India. The complexity of offering services across multiple platforms and the fact that services are becoming more complex will lead to new challenges for both the OSS and BSS domains.
