Provisioning

A large subcategory of OSS customer care products is concerned with provisioning, that is, setting
up services for existing accounts as well as signing on new customers and providing them
with services. Provisioning software can completely eliminate the need for a customer representative
for routine transactions and can save the network operator substantial amounts of
money for that reason. Normally such software customers will be directed to a secure Web site
where, after authenticating themselves, they can request new services or alter existing ones.
The provisioning software will then communicate back to the inventory management software
to determine whether the resources are available to support the new service and will then signal
the network management software to command the necessary operations to take place in
the network elements to enable the service. Additional communications will be made to the
billing and mediation software to correct a customer’s account to reflect the changes. In the
case of new customers, a credit card may be requested as well as an address. Obviously, with a
new customer, the process cannot be completely automated because a subscriber will still
have to be provided with a terminal, but in many instances that can be mailed to a customer’s
residence and self-installed rather than involving a truck roll and a visit by a technician.
Some provisioning software is capable of throttling bandwidth to users who attempt to
command a disproportionate share of network resources, and such capabilities are valuable
and desirable. Bandwidth is still a scarce resource in wireless networks, and low-value customers
should not be permitted to monopolize it.
The actual implementation of service is sometimes defined as a separate process and is
known as service activation. Normally service activation is accomplished through the network
management and element management modules, not through a specialized software solution.