Indy wireless play pushes open source into back office

Crossroads Wireless is building an Independent-centric mobile virtual network operator offering that aims to leverage the economics of open-source software to make a splash in underserved rural service markets.

Headquartered in Oklahoma City, Crossroads is still in launch mode. It is building a CDMA EV-DO Rev A network and leveraging a long-term roaming relationship with Sprint Nextel to build out its wireless voice and data network across 32 states, covering 9.7 million users. Buildout is under way and not yet complete, but at least part of the plan is to market Crossroads Wireless products through partnerships with Independent local carriers.

One of the most interesting aspects of the buildout is Crossroads' decision to build its own back office using open-source technologies from vendor Transverse, a new back-office software provider led by executives with deep roots in the traditional telco back-office business. The software is particularly critical because the company's operations support system/business support system (OSS/BSS) must work in a complex, multicarrier environment.

Open-source OSS/BSS is a relatively new concept, helped in part by Transverse, which earlier this year unveiled its first product, the Business Logic Execution Environment and Platform. Bleep, as the product is nicknamed, uses a service-oriented architecture core and an integrated set of business management services that carriers can deploy to manage their networks as well as new and existing services. Services on Bleep are grouped in business domain structures that can be combined to provide more than 2100 different individual services. Among the applications that can be created in this plug-and-play fashion are multiservice billing and customer care, order and service management, real-time service delivery, on-device portals, and enterprise resource planning solutions.

For Crossroads Wireless, which needed to put together a complex operations support environment while keeping costs low, open-source economics were compelling, said Dan Andreola, vice president of IT for Crossroads.

“We need to be as efficient as possible, cut costs and maximize our investments,” Andreola said, noting that even as multiple ILECs buy into the Crossroads vision, the company will be able to leverage a single, flexible BSS/OSS environment with the help of Transverse and Bleep.

The Bleep platform is an update and customization of open-source telecom platform Apache Open for Business, which itself morphed into another project called OpenTaps. Transverse took that open-source code and with Crossroads and a few other initial customers in tow “customized it for the telecom arena,” Andreola said. “We'll use it as our main [OSS/BSS] platform, wherever in the back office it makes sense.”