Lack of rules hinders OSS play

Parties on both sides of a brewing debate about the openness of carriers' operations support systems say a lack of national standards is a critical stumbling block.

Incumbent LECs have developed extensive OSSs, but they are complex arechitectures filled with proprietary systems. Though CLECs are developing their own OSSs, they must interconnect with incumbents' OSSs to gain important customer and service information.

The Telecom Act of 1996 and, more recently, the Federal Communications Commission's hotly debated local competition interexchange order have demanded "just, reasonable and nondiscriminatory" access to incumbent LECs' OSSs for the CLECs. But the debate rages as to what exactly this means.

One primary theme running through a recent forum at FCC headquarters was the need for national standards to measure compliance with OSS openness.

The CLECs claim that no convenient way exists to measure how open an incumbent carrier's OSS is. It is difficult, they argue, to determine what measures must be met in terms of an order fulfillment's timeliness or a line's repair and maintenance (see story on page 110).

The absence of national standards not only slows competition, it also hurts consumers, said CLEC representative Tom Priday of MCI Communications.

"When you purchase a new car, you get documentation for what that car will provide you, whether you buy it here or in San Francisco," said Priday, senior manager of OSSs for MCI. "We need the same thing in telecommunications." Though a standard is overdue, trade groups such as the Network Management Forum and the Order and Billing Forum are working on it.

Recent FCC rulings may be partly to blame for the ambiguity. The FCC mandates that incumbent LECs provide "parity" in services, meaning competitors have the same access to their OSS as they do. But the ruling also says the incumbents are to provide a "reasonable opportunity to compete.

What constitutes "reasonable opportunity" and the exact meaning of OSS parity promises to fuel future debate as local loop competition heats up.