Maintenance of a logical and efficient service provisioning architecture is a key underpinning of carrier success

Start-ups often must face the fact that this is the way things will be for them, partly because it is what the harsh reality of business survival dictates. Building a working network, keeping an eye on mounting debt and cultivating a market presence are critical in the early going for these new players. By comparison, perfecting day-to-day operations is a more distant concern, whose lessons, for better or worse, will be learned through experience.

So it goes for the PCS industry, whose challenges and handicaps have been documented in the media and mentioned by prognosticators so many times that they stick in one's mind like the catchy but ultimately tiring lyrics of a pop song.

The list of solutions to these challenges, however, can be an equally tiring chant. So often, PCS operators and other start-ups are counseled in how to conquer these challenges only in the most simplistic and general terms. Be aggressive. Be sly. Be different. Act like the entrepreneur that you are.

What is lacking is specific and sound operational advice-how to plan ahead so that you can always make service available in a timely fashion, activate it at a customer's wish and manage it without incident. Market slyness is nothing if it is not backed up by a product that works.

Carrier profiles The telecommunications industry-if you haven't heard-is in the midst of a service management revolution. But if you haven't heard about it, put only half the blame on yourself. Even the most experienced companies are just beginning to implement progressive service management strategies.

It took these companies some time to understand the relation their service support structures and management strategies had with their overall competitiveness. But now, as competition in several industry markets spreads, carriers are seeing that reliable and well-managed service can translate into a fine differentiation that might hold them above other carriers when users go shopping for service.

Attaining service management distinction requires intense change for these carriers, and steps toward improving service management actually go hand-in-hand with overall operational re-engineering programs within their organizations. These programs are represented either by long-term projects of self-assessment, cost cutting and technology integration, or by goals for investing in products that will streamline operational processes.

Both strategies seek to have great impact on the chain of processes and steps that account for activities such as service ordering, order processing, service activation, billing, service maintenance, inventory management and future service planning.

The ultimate goal is to have a service delivery chain consisting of as few steps as possible, as much automation as possible, low operational costs, deep and logical technology integration, the highest amount of productivity possible and the highest level of reliability.

For those experienced companies, reaching this goal is a matter of Darwinian proportions. Many of them must evolve existing operations and service support systems, as well as databases that may have originally been homegrown or may be so old that they have no logical interfaces to other kinds of systems. For them, and particularly incumbent wireline carriers such as the Bell companies, the evolution must cover vast ground quickly because complex competitive pressures are imminent.

"They must evolve their [operations support systems] to handle service level agreements and the complications of unbundling," says Mike Rieger, solutions executive for network management at IBM's Telecommunications and Media division.

That sounds more complex than anything PCS carriers should expect the service delivery portions of their OSSs to handle, and indeed, that is where realities of experienced carriers and new carriers begins to differ. Although some PCS carriers have operated as cellular companies in the past or are affiliated with existing wireline carriers, many have no such legacy to stand on. And whether or not that legacy exists, wireless carriers in general face different issues.

Even though wireline carriers face massive evolutions, establishing interfaces to embedded legacy systems is pretty straightforward compared with building an OSS from scratch, which is what PCS carriers have to do, says Dave Curry, senior vice president of business development at Architel Systems.

Most PCS carriers probably do not even understand that a service level agreement is a contractual obligation under which a carrier pledges to meet certain service performance and reliability guarantees.

Still, competition is something carriers in the wireless industry have more experience with than many of their wireline counterparts. They are quick to grasp the value of service differentiation and the marketability of quick service activation.

Service set complexity in the wireless industry also is rapidly advancing. Data is a reality, if not a dominant success, and enhanced services are growing modestly but steadily in popularity. Because different kinds of customers often want different kinds of service sets, carriers should plan for varied and unique combinations. Some may want voice and voice mail, while others want single-number service, conferencing capabilities and some form of e-mail, and expect to take advantage of special package pricing. Even so, some still will just want voice. Carriers must be able to activate these complex service sets and manage them.

"Rapid service activation is good, but you still have to do it right. It can be a nightmare if billing and network services databases are somehow out of sync," says Richard Norris, director of customer care solutions at Logica, a billing vendor. "That is why tighter integration between all these functions is necessary."

The next generation In general, PCS companies are interested in buying OSSs and functional elements, rather than building them on an as-needed basis like many existing carriers once did. In an earlier day, wireline companies had an ad-hoc philosophy about building OSSs, and market pressure did not dictate otherwise. The largest PCS carriers, specifically the ones with some affiliation to legacy cellular or wireline carriers, are content to make good use of what they already have by augmenting current OSS components with interfaces to new PCS support databases, or by modeling their PCS operations closely after their existing operations.

Bell Mobility and Pacific Bell Mobile Services are examples of PCS carriers that have tackled the construction of their OSSs progressively. Bell Mobility is Canada's largest cellular operator and also is among four new PCS operators sharing spectrum up north. With its PCS operation, the company saw an opportunity to develop sophisticated services sets involving short message services and wireless e-mail access. These services were easily supported by the digital network infrastructure inherent to PCS, but Bell Mobility chose to provide back office support by putting new interfaces on its existing analog cellular OSS.

In Pacific Bell's case, the company has plenty of experience as a wireless provider, but it spun off its whole cellular operations years ago and is starting from scratch with PCS. Savvy gleaned from past experience helped it quickly build a progressive OSS that also could support new trends in services marketing that tend to complicate service provisioning functions. Like many other PCS providers, Pac Bell is seeking to make retail availability and over-the-air activation hallmarks of its new service. This requires closer integration between carrier back office systems and retail outlets as well as vastly more intelligent call centers and activation databases.

"The wireless industry's previous generation can be a drag on PCS sometimes, but it can also be a benefit when you need to lean on it," says Norris, whose company worked with Pac Bell on billing functions (Figure 1).

In general, the carriers that have that legacy to stand on are a more stable group with a more well-rounded view of OSS issues than the small or independent PCS carriers.

In fact, time-to-market pressures and cost questions might have a harsher effect on these truly new PCS companies. They are not ready to spend too much time or money designing their OSSs piecemeal.

"We've seen before how they spend their time and money on their networks first and figure that OSS issues will wait until later. We see them shopping for OSS components now. They are looking for proven OSSs, but they want something that is inexpensive," says Architel's Curry. "But they shouldn't shortchange themselves on OSS decisions."

Indeed, the PCS industry, though still young, will see many of its participants attain a significant mark of maturity within the next year or so-1 million customers. "That's fast growth and huge demand on service support," says Norris. "There is a danger in taking shortcuts on these functions early on."

Several vendors say they already are hearing from some carriers that built their first OSSs without scalability in mind. Others left integration holes between certain service support systems and are now finding that their non-automated functions are causing productivity to dip.

"They want their support systems quick but not dirty, so it's a Catch 22," says Judith Ridgeway, product manager for OpenView Telecom at Hewlett-Packard. "We see wireless developing as a growing target market for service support products, and we didn't think it would be yet."

The clear message is that PCS carriers can be lean and mean, but they also must keep one eye toward long-term success by dismissing the natural urge to cobble together disparate systems.

"Some don't know how they want to run their businesses yet. It is important that the new carriers understand how to put the systems together to assemble a workflow chain that can be easily understood and managed," says Dana Brown, vice president of marketing at MetaSolv Software (Figure 2).

There can be potentially more than a hundred separate steps in the process of activating one service for one customer, according to industry figures.

"With that kind of service complexity, there is so much that can go wrong, especially if there is a lack of standard interfaces between systems such as ordering and billing databases," says IBM's Rieger.

PCS carriers cannot be expected to master all these functions in short order. Logica's Norris says that PCS carriers can attend to service support needs and not miss time to market by focusing on three foundation issues, literally the ABCs of operational success-activation, billing and collection. "These are the functions they need to concentrate on perfecting in the early going," he says.

Beyond that, automation of service support processes must be a primary goal for PCS carriers.

And as Rieger mentioned, following standards is important. Existing and evolving standards such as the Telecommunications Management Network framework and the related Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) can put carriers on common ground with the rest of the industry. Specifically, CORBA offers its carrier users standard methods for accessing frequently used objects that can help assemble software commands and distribute information across multiple systems simultaneously. For example, it could be used to distribute service order information to inventory, phone number, billing and spectrum provisioning databases, thus streamlining what could have been a longer, more complex step-by-step process.

"This can be very handy in making service activation a more painless process," says Rieger.

Expertise wanted Having the right operational philosophy and assembling a capable, scalable technology environment will take PCS companies a long way. Understanding the requirements, however, does not come naturally to everyone.

The service management revolution has had both a positive and negative effect on the pool of operational management personnel involved in the wireless industry. Operational executives, managers and technicians are at a premium as never before, making these jobs among the hottest, most high-profile professions in a fast-growing industry. Operational executives such as Frank Casazza of Pacific Bell Mobile Services and Keith Kaczmarek, formerly of PrimeCo, gained early media notice for the inventive and well-planned operational and service support strategies their companies implemented.

The flip side is that, right now, there is not nearly enough expertise to go around. Kaczmarek was lured away from PrimeCo Personal Communications last year to take on OSS responsibilities at Teligent, the high-profile competitive carrier crafted by Alex Mandl, formerly the No. 2 executive at AT&T.

The shallow pool of expertise and the movement of OSS visionaries between companies can be blamed at least in part on broad industry recognition of the service management revolution. Local exchange carriers, competitive LECs, long-distance carriers, Internet service providers and others all are participating.

And if PCS companies were hoping to lure OSS experts into their folds with the promise of start-up adventures, this is no longer an original idea. New carriers are being launched at a pace never before seen in the telecommunications industry, especially in the local exchange and Internet sectors.

"The explosion of entrants has strained the base of experienced and qualified people," says Rieger.

The result is that many companies cannot find-or afford-enough employees who are experienced with planning and building service support structures.

"There has to be somebody in the organization who gets the big picture, who understands the continuum from customer acquisition through billing. You have to have those people, or else you're going down blind alleys," says Architel's Curry.

With so many other factors contributing to the potential success or failure of PCS carriers, having an OSS expert in the house does not guarantee business survival. Many companies that do not have their own OSS cheerleaders usually end up seeking help from consultants. Many of the major consulting agencies have helped PCS carriers plan their back office structures or have recommended vendors for specific systems.

For many carriers, another answer is to put faith in system vendors to deliver on their specific requirements. Many vendors have come to recognize that PCS carriers, while wanting to buy and install equipment quickly, might need some help fitting systems into a larger, end-to-end perspective.

Whatever the course, it is important that PCS carriers recognize both short-term service needs and long-term eventualities before they implement service support structures. Curry says, "A top issue has to be, 'How am I going to deliver service?' Every other carrier will go out and buy the same network equipment, but operational excellence is how you really differentiate your service.">TIKeep the shelves stocked>BYDan O'Shea>TXDeat h is not an option: Sell service later, but based on a progressive operations support system, or sell it now, but with a makeshift OSS?

Two words are italicized in that question, and for many wireless service providers, they are the only two words that matter. The booming ways of the wireless services business have lured many an entrepreneur to gamble sanity and financial stability for greater gain-PCS carriers are only the most recent to roll the dice. With so much on the line, selling service and seeing some income from doing so can quickly become the linchpin in every carrier's axles.

The problem is that selling service is more of a goal in itself than a tool for reaching goals, and it is a goal that must be reached before all others can be pursued. Many tools will help carriers reach this first goal, and one of the most important, technically speaking, is the OSS, which by definition is really more of a service support system.

Throughout much of the telecommunications industry, network operators are realizing deficiencies in their legacy OSSs that fail to position them progressively against increasing competition. In virtually all cases, these OSSs were designed for companies that had captive clients-customers who neither expected nor actually had much power to demand simple service ordering, quick service activation, reliable billing or flexible response to problems. The OSSs were also designed to support simple operations-a company offering one service (voice), likely at one price.

However, offering telecom services, and particularly wireless services, is a more complex notion than it used to be. Competition has put more pressure on carriers to deliver service quickly and effectively, and because of this, OSS efficiency has become a competitive asset.

For many carriers, this means overhauling existing systems. For new carriers, such as the PCS crowd, it means having the chance to build the OSS right the first time-as a well-oiled service provisioning engine.

Our cover story in this issue of PCS Edge discusses the advantages of progressive service support, the PCS industry's recognition of these benefits and the disadvantages of disregarding service support issues.

In other stories, we'll examine the importance of network reliability, the role of SS7 technology in PCS networks, carrier personnel issues and location technology. Also, this month's carrier profile turns the spotlight on Clearnet, one of the PCS carriers testing Canada's warming wireless waters.

Any PCS carrier anywhere faces a lengthy checklist of pre-launch requirements. Operational efficiency is just one of these, but it is also a top prerequisite for success in any business.

If you are hampered in your ability to make your product available to the masses, you have already shot yourself in the foot. Your chances to succeed quickly diminish, and death does, in fact, become an option.