subject: The Evolution Of Telecom Billing Solution [print this page] The telecom billing software 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.
OSS stands for Operational Support Systems and as the name suggests it is for supporting the network operations. Even ISP has invested a lot of money in installing a resource base to provide high bandwidth solution to the customers and in more recent times also provide wireless services. With growing network size and complexity, managing and supporting it is becoming a tough challenge. OSS systems can help tackle this challenge.
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.
With the growing market demands and changing equations, the scope of OSS solutions increased from network element management to customer and business management and more importantly to inventory management solutions. These new solutions are vital for the ISP to maintain its edge over the competition. Without good management systems, in today's complex networks losing track of things is not tough.
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.
