OSS in Perspective
OSS is largely a development of the last 20 years. Traditional telephone and cable television
networks were not highly automated in respect to business functions, and the enterprise software
used within service provider central offices seldom communicated directly with network
elements to initiate, modify, or terminate service. Indeed, most of the networking elements
made prior to 1990 were automatic only in respect to switching functions, and they required
manual configuration for the commencement of service to subscribers. Given that the service
networks were in most cases monopolies, the network operators had little need to automate
the management of either the network itself or of the business functions relating to the sale of
network services to the subscribers. Any costs associated with operational inefficiencies were
simply passed onto the subscriber, and the many and costly human interventions attendant
upon any change of service provided reassuring human contact to those same subscribers.
The rise of competition in the wake of the Bell System divestiture in 1984 coupled with
the rapid increases in computing power in the years thereafter gave rise to OSS as you know
it today as operators sought platforms exploiting the new generations of high-speed microprocessors,
platforms that would maximize the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their operations.
As with most new developments, OSS took a few years to define itself, but the growth of
the category since the early 1990s has been explosive, and even during the depressed period
following the burst of the telecom financial bubble, that growth never slackened. Indeed, it
increased as network operators sought to reduce staffing requirements, deliver new types of
services more quickly and more responsively, and generally achieve rapid profitability in the
face of declining outside investment.
It is safe to say that no network of any size can compete effectively today absent a large
degree of automation. That being the case, OSS software is an investment that is every bit as
necessary as radio base station radios, controllers, and subscriber terminals. Unfortunately,
OSS software solutions are far less straightforward in operational terms than is standardsbased
wireless broadband equipment because OSS itself is governed by no similarly comprehensive
standards. The situation is made worse because OSS software manufacturers tend to
specialize in one or at most a few subcategories, and so the network operator is frequently
obliged to follow a “best-of-breed” approach by purchasing software modules from a number
of vendors to manage various aspects of the operation. The OSS industry is sufficiently mature
to where specialized vendors have formed partnerships with other specialized vendors and
made their respective products interoperable, but the network manager may yet face a situation
where those systems that are fully interoperable may not be best of breed and where the
manager may have to sacrifice functionality to achieve systemwide interoperability.
Incumbent telecommunications carriers commonly employ a large number of programmers
with specific expertise in OSS to devise “hooks” that will allow favored OSS systems to
communicate with one another, but a startup wireless network is in no position to emulate
that practice. The network operator requires instead a comprehensive solution that is more
or less fully integrated. Fortunately, some vendors will customize and modify their basic software offerings to allow the operator to achieve such integration, but the operator is still
left with the task of evaluating a large number of possible software combinations and seeking
expert opinion as to which combinations allow for easy integration while at the same time
meeting the crucial operational needs of the network.
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