Cable provides a welcome addition to TM Forum

Early last month, MegaFon, the largest mobile provider in the Russian Federation, became the 600th member of the TM Forum. And while the forum's member base continues to expand to other countries, now 65, and other market segments, such as enterprises and content providers, it is perhaps the recent flood of cable companies that will have the most to contribute and to absorb.

One of the carrots leading cable providers to the TM Forum was its existing relationship with IPDR.org, which the forum acquired along with the Global Billing Association in May. IPDR.org is a consortium of service providers, equipment vendors, system integrators, and billing and mediation vendors that collaborate on the exchange of usage and control data between network and hosting elements and business support systems.

Kelly Anderson, president and CEO of IPDR.org, and now heading the cable interest group at the forum, said the Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) standard was already part of the DOCSIS standard and was in use by cable providers, so it gave them the push they needed to join the TMF.

"Now that IPDR is part of the TMF, a lot of cable companies are using it as a springboard into other work from the TMF," Anderson said. "A lot of the IPDR artifacts and specifications will be used as part of cable effort, but it goes beyond IPDR."

She said cable companies are also interested in the eTOM (telecom operations map) and the NGOSS framework as well as the Shared Information/Data model (SID). "There is a complete gap in the OSS/BSS space as far as cable companies go. These artifacts are very applicable to the cable market and are ready to fill that gap," Anderson said.

In July, the TMF formed a cable interest group. It is a group of cable executives from member companies that are looking at what issues are not being addressed by any other standards organizations.

"Telcos have the TMF and ATIS and other bodies, but in the cable arena there is nothing for handling OSS/BSS," Anderson said. "So the effort from the TMF is to put forward a complementary solution to what standards organizations in the cable arena, like CableLabs, are doing today."

Vendors such as Sigma Systems, which turned its focus to the cable industry during the meltdown in 2001, brought some of the TMF frameworks to the cable companies. However, it was tough to cross domains within the cable space.

"Cable providers really like to define their own architectures so there is not a lot of integration among OSS/BSS," Anderson said.

In addition to the cable software infrastructure, the set-top box also is a new element for the OSS/BSS. Anderson said it is a natural extension for them to be managed as part of the infrastructure. "The time is now for accommodating the interfaces for next-generation services and the specs that were in place we OK for flat-rate services, but with IPTV, interactive advertising and other media, cable companies will lead a lot more [in the way of frameworks]."

In a demonstration of its new commitment, Time Warner Cable's CTO Mike LaJoie is the lead keynote speaker at the Management World Americas. LaJoie has been responsible for the development and implementation of TWC's technology strategy for video, data and voice products, technology support and network operations.

"Cable companies are integrating a lot of the standards and are looking for direction for a lot of other standards that need to be in place. The TMF has solutions that are probably 98% there for the cable industry," Anderson said.