report - Light Reading

OPERATIONAL SUPPORT EVOLUTION WITH WEB SERVICES
Self-assurance
As demonstrated by Alcatel in the
DSL domain, good support for selfassurance
can reduce the number of
helpdesk calls by 30%, thus allowing
an important decrease in operational
costs. Such self-assurance support
consists of:
• guiding the end user in problem
diagnostics, e.g. via a Web GUI or TV
screen indications;
• gathering data on the end user’s
terminal (software version, configuration
and performance data, etc.) to
perform parallel troubleshooting
from the SP side;
• automatic forwarding to a call center
if the end user is unable to solve
the problem.
All these service assurance aspects
need to be covered in a carrier-class,
competitive OSDE environment. Alcatel has used its experience
in both applications and telecommunications service delivery
to build the required service assurance features into its OSDE
and OSS solutions, e.g. the Alcatel 8950 Assurance Solution,
complemented by the Alcatel 5950 Broadband Care solution.
For a service like My Own TV, service assurance will comprise
the exploitation of the collected data according to the QoS
policies of the operator and the triggering of related alarms.
Service billing
All of the above only makes sense if the OSDE provides appropriate
features to bill the delivered services (see Figure 6).
Billing for next-generation services needs to be as flexible as
the orchestration environment that is used to build these services.
In addition, B2B/B2C services may require support for
instant payment of items or content, while telecommunications
services often require pre-paid and post-paid approaches.
Further, in both cases, additional on-line rating may apply.
The billing architecture and protocols for next-generation
services have been extensively standardized as part of the 3GPP
IMS architecture. ETSI TISPAN is adapting this to include additional
fixed broadband service billing requirements to achieve
a convergent fixed/mobile billing architecture fully supported
by the Alcatel OSDE.
The Alcatel OSDE provides the features for data generation,
in particular CDRs, for use by Web services developed with the
OSDE. The OSDE supports a wide variety of real-time payment
features through the Alcatel 8610 Prepaid-Postpaid Suite
applications:
• integrated 8618 Convergent Rating Engine services for realtime
rating, according to a set of operator-determined constraints
or billing policies;
• instant payment through the integration of the Valista
Micro-Payment system;
• finally, 8965 C3S complements the OSDE payment chain with
services for off-line data collection and processing of generated
CDRs or billing events, and for interfacing with OSS
applications, such as fraud analysis and billing systems.
Figure 8: OSS and Network Management for IMS/NGN and OSDE positioning
Mobile
Circuit
Access
Operations and Business Support Systems
Network Domain Managers
Service Aware Edge
and Data-Aware Transport
Mobile
Data
Access
Fixed
Circuit
Access
OSS Interfaces / WebServices
Fixed
Data
Access
IMS/NGN
Network
Conclusion
The aim of this article was to show the OSDE features
required to enable SPs to create, provision, assure and bill new
services in the most flexible way. In particular, OSDE support
for creating manageable Web services, and the impact of Web
services and orchestration technology on OSS processes and
integration, have been explored.
The introduction of an IMS/NGN infrastructure can have a
significant impact on a Service Provider’s operational processes
and OSS environment.
Deploying next-generation services without the support of
an OSDE that can fully integrate with the OSS environment may
lead to an operational nightmare.
When selecting IMS/NGN network and OSDE providers, an
SP needs to assess the capabilities of these suppliers to understand
the full scope of the required evolutions and the
involved technologies, including the impact on the SP’s OSS
(see Figure 8).
Alcatel’s OSDE is a reliable, carrier-class OSDE that provides
all the features necessary to help telecommunications SPs
migrate in a stepped way to IMS/NGN and OSDE, while
enabling integration with legacy service environments.
Therefore Alcatel will help Service Providers to be more
competitive in the next-generation services market, to face new
entrant SPs focused on B2B or B2C businesses.
By introducing Alcatel’s solutions for IMS/NGN and OSDE
into their network, and by relying on Alcatel’s Professional Integration
Services, telecommunications Service Providers will
have a key competitive advantage to facilitate their success in
next-generation service delivery.
280 - Alcatel Telecommunications Review - 4 th Quarter 2005 www.alcatel.com/atr
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Tanja de Groot is OSS Strategy Director in the Alcatel
CTO Network Strategy Group, Paris, France.
(Tanja.de_Groot@alcatel.com)