Art-ology

The telecom OSS has been the latest trend in the growth of the telecommunications field in general. Over the years, ISPs have gone from increasing the number of customers to increasing their network capacity, to more recently delivering greater bandwidth to their customers. All along they have had to create and destroy network architectures. The present day telecom network is a medley of various generations of technologies and services. The OSS systems are very useful in managing these myriad solutions.

Operational Support Systems, or OSS as they are called for short, are not necessary for the service to work, but are critical to ensure that service can be delivered, is delivered, and will continue to be delivered. They are the support systems that make the service delivery happen. Over the years, the telecom operators have expanded their operations into many domains and that has led to a lot of network built up. Keeping track of and managing these networks is where OSS solutions help.

One of the earlier OSS solutions to hit the market was EMS solutions or Element Management Systems. These were management solutions provided by a single network equipment vendor to manage their network elements in the ISP network. However, with growing business and competition among vendors, ISPs have diversified their networks to have elements from different vendors. This way they can de-risk dependence on a single source. This led to the NMS, or Network Management System, evolution that could manage elements in such a heterogeneous environment.

The NMS/EMS solutions provide several management functions that are vital for any ISP. These range from configuration solutions to alarm reporting and other control features. What these NMS/EMS systems have done is that they have allowed ISPs to start monitoring and troubleshooting the network problems remotely from a central location rather than from field. This gives a lot of cost savings and reduced troubleshooting cycles.

Over the years, as the ISP requirements grew, the OSS systems evolved. Today, it is not just EMS/ NMS, but it also encompasses Customer Management Systems, Business Management Systems, Inventory Management Systems, etc. These evolutions help ISP tackle different pain areas of rapidly growing network operations to meet customer demands better.

Inventory management system warrants a special mention among the newer OSS features. This is because over the years, network inventory has become a very important aspect of the system. This is not just the inventory stored in the warehouses, but also inventory in the live network. This information is critical while planning a major service roll-out or upgrade. Accurate inventory is very important for successful service delivery.

The last aspect of the new telecom billing software is that they have now moved from just single technology and single network solution to a multi-technology heterogeneous solution. The reason, again, is market driven. To retain customers and increase ARPU, most telecom service providers are promoting bundled services and triple play. Strong OSS systems are needed to achieve this.

All in all, Telecom Billing OSS is the key components in modern ISP growth. The Telecom Billing Software can help the service providers build and operate better systems and networks. Better networks translate into better services making for better customer experience.