To Thine Own Network Be True

OSS allow you to adapt as changes come your way.

Know your network, keep a watchful eye on your customers' needs and be ready for future opportunities. It's good advice for any wireless-service provider but especially important when considering the effect operations support systems (OSS) have on a wireless enterprise. OSS, and especially configuration-management systems, are an integral part of every successful wireless operation. Although they aren't the center of all things wireless, paying close attention to the software that supports engineering and operations goes a long way toward maintaining a smooth-running network and preventing customer churn.

Understanding the OSS impacts of different network types is critical to really "knowing" your network. Although their roots may be similar, wireless and wireline networks are more dissimilar when it comes to engineering and operations. Because of this dissimilarity, a configuration-management OSS designed with wireline in mind is not a good choice for the wireless-service provider.

Wireless and wireline networks perform a lot of the same functions: completing phone calls, connecting users to the Internet and providing subscribers the convenience of communications. But from an equipment standpoint, the provisioning process involved in each network is vastly different.

Most of the drivers for changes in wireline-network configuration are customer-driven in contrast to the engineering and planning focus in wireless networks. That simple difference makes a tremendous impact on the architecture and function of a configuration-management OSS.

For example, in wireline networks, a customer request for an additional phone line generates network-change activity driven by a specific "order." That order sets in motion a number of steps ensuring the appropriate central office, switch and outside plant equipment is assigned and available. Those assignments trigger specific changes to a configuration-management OSS. Lack of available facilities drives the placement of new equipment and facilities.

On the other hand, the addition of a new wireless subscriber may generate an "order" and create a customer database record but doesn't have a correlated effect on the configuration-management system. Although wireless-phone numbers may be assigned in the switch or HLR, there is no specific line, timeslot assignment or dedicated equipment involved.

Making changes to wireless networks involves monitoring and analyzing performance of the network as a whole, and applying engineering guidelines to augment capacity or add equipment. These changes are event rather than customer driven.

Exhausting a T3 link, rehoming circuits from one MSC to another or running out of switch ports on a switch module are examples of events requiring engineering decisions. Wireline networks have similar events that drive network change but the majority of the activity is customer driven.

These procedural differences have a direct effect on a configuration-management OSS. In a wireline network, the driving data flow for network change is order-related and dictates a closely coupled relationship between order management and network configuration. For wireless networks, network planning drives the configuration changes so an engineering-centric architecture and structure is more appropriate.

Customer-driven OSS systems don't always deal with the network-change aspects derived from the network planning and engineering process. Therefore, "knowing" your network plays a strategic role in making informed configuration-management OSS decisions.

Customer Needs
The lack of a customer-driven configuration-management OSS doesn't mean providers should pay less attention to subscriber needs. A primary purpose of an OSS with a network-planning and engineering focus is to anticipate subscriber needs and demand.

Subscribers want to have wireless service available where and when necessary. In response to that, providers pride themselves on their "anytime, anywhere" capability in contrast to wireline's tethered connection.

Being responsive to these customer needs implies maintaining a network that anticipates and responds to changes in customer demand. Modern configuration-management systems do that while allowing the service provider to maintain high service-quality levels.

These systems provide a complete inventory of network equipment down to a card, port and timeslot level. They also track the inventory of existing circuits, leased connections, microwave paths and SONET facilities, along with a complete assignment database of the end-to-end routing of circuits through those resources. As thresholds are exhausted or capacity strained, appropriate actions can be taken to add equipment and maintain consistent service quality.

Access to network information at critical operations junctures demonstrates the effectiveness of a configuration and management OSS. Consider a network-outage example. If a number of cell sites drop out of service simultaneously, what's the problem? There's a high probability a single common component is involved, but what and where?

A network-configuration-management system points to the problem area directly, eliminating possible time delays and guesswork. A graphical interface allows users to visually select the affected circuit paths terminating at the five cell sites. Clicking on a visualize button brings up a conjoined schematic depicting all equipment components between the A and Z ends.

Seeing a common T3 channel, the user can initiate loopback testing to isolate the failure to a particular piece of equipment. Depending on the location and circumstances, providers initiate dispatch and repair procedures. With quick access to the network-design information, downtime is minimized.

Also, configuration-management systems prove invaluable in anticipating where and when additional capacity will be necessary in response to market-stimulation efforts.

No OSS system can guarantee where adequate capacity is or will be available in all situations. But with access to the right network information, a configuration-management system can assist an engineer in quickly spotting potential trouble areas, allowing the service provider to become pro-active instead of reactive to capacity demands.

The end result is more completed calls without blocking and higher levels of customer satisfaction. By keeping service quality high, subscribers don't have a reason to churn.

Future Prepared
Anticipating the unknown or unexpected is another important aspect of maintaining a successful wireless operation. Once again, the issues surrounding the choice of an OSS play a major role. Consider the recent trend of mergers and acquisitions in wireless systems.

Because no two wireless companies operate exactly the same, a merger of "like" or in some cases "unlike" systems can pose a variety of network- and OSS-related issues, the most basic being the network equipment.

Many wireless-service providers choose to maintain vendor diversity in their own networks but merging with or acquiring another provider no doubt expands that diversity. Because wholesale replacement of a particular vendor's equipment is an infrequent and most often uneconomic option, the resulting combined operation must be able to track both sets of infrastructure from a common OSS tool set.

Service Provider A, for example, may rely on Motorola and Nortel as primary equipment suppliers, while Service Provider B deploys Lucent and Motorola. The in-place configuration-management systems could range from a conglomeration of spreadsheets to vendor-optimized systems, but the surviving OSS must be flexible enough to cover a broad range of vendor equipment.

That flexibility can have a considerable effect on how smoothly and easily two or multiple systems merge or combine. In all industries, for every wildly successful merger story, there are other examples where the benefits looked more attractive on paper than they proved in execution. The difficulty of combining operations is often the culprit.

Expanded vendor diversity is not the only OSS flexibility issue facing providers in merger/acquisition situations. Reconciling the operations, network-management and maintenance philosophies of a combined operation can prove equally vexing.

A major decision every merged operation must face is whether the combined network retains a centralized or regional/local operations structure — assuming they were different at the outset. In addition, both merging companies likely will have best engineering practices, which dictate how to design circuits and at what point you place orders for new capacity.

These philosophies and practices — although ingrained in each organization — can and will be resolved. Because there is no right or wrong "way" to run a wireless network, the choice is less an issue of the pros and cons of the available options than a preference or management style.

But merging two or more disparate OSSs isn't quite as simple. Ideally, the software systems supporting the resulting enterprise should be distributed in structure and be able to function in either a centralized or autonomous mode.

With a distributed OSS, the chosen management philosophy is transparent and inconsequential to the system. That flexibility pays big dividends in the short term as the network grows and more users need access to the data or in the long term should the operations and maintenance philosophy change.

Centralized operations, for example, are popular because they bring a level of consistency and efficiency to the network and how it functions. But as network geography expands — through acquisitions or mergers — some service providers may prefer splitting the pie and running with regional operations centers, or a combination of the two.

Having configuration-management software resident in every network operations center (NOC) — centralized or distributed — may seem like a simple answer but it doesn't solve the problem. Even under a distributed-operations philosophy, systems must be configured to share information.

Circuits, which were once the domain of a single NOC, now may span multiple locations or regions. OSS users need distributed access to build circuits that cross from one region into another. The OSS should support these clusters of users,depending on their specific job functions and needs.

Whether operating under a centralized or regional operations philosophy, if the OSS system doesn't support the possibility of regional partitioning of data, you lose the flexibility of viewing the network from a micro, macro or global perspective.

These are architectural issues, which determine the data structure of the OSS and are not standard across all system suppliers. It's an important consideration because the wireless unknowns could become more rather than less prevalent as time passes and networks mature.

Know Your Network II
This concept of network or business unknowns brings us full circle to "knowing" your wireless network. There is a distinct possibility the network — and/or wireless business — will change in the future, so knowing your network needs to be an ongoing consideration. As such, the issues facing the choice of a configuration-management OSS should be viewed in the same light.

Third-generation equipment is on the horizon and brings with it the possibility of different or additional network elements or configurations. Just as equipment and vendor-diversity issues affected configuration-management OSS, so will the introduction of 3G equipment.

The addition of higher data rates and packet services could result in a need to track capacity in alternative ways and formats. Providing greater capacity on demand along with the possibility of varying priorities suggests traditional engineering and design practices may change.

Under these circumstances or network "unknowns," configuration-management systems designed to track channel capacity with current engineering practices and guidelines alone may be inadequate.

Likewise, the introduction of IP devices and network elements will make their way into wireless networks. Equipment manufacturers already are working on next-generation equipment, which incorporates the economies and benefits of IP, in an effort to drive network costs down.

These changes will have a corresponding effect on the configuration-management OSS. With an OSS data structure not tied to a particular technology, vendor or engineering practice, incorporating the resulting equipment and configurations alternatives will be a painless process.

Even the notion of wireless-service providers could change as consolidations continue and businesses search for ways to grow, increase revenues and build shareholder value. The "pure" wireless play could transition to a combination of wireless and any combination of wireline, ISP, CLEC or even content provider.

As such, tracking network assets from lines of business with varying engineering processes and philosophies only can get more complicated. RBOCs experienced a tremendous shift in network technology and equipment additions throughout the 1980s and 90s. And because of their antiquated OSS platforms, the results were often kluged and insufficient.

Wireless-service providers have an opportunity to learn from the experiences and track records of others when it comes to OSS selection and use. In an environment of ongoing transition or change, it's prudent to consider OSS systems, which easily adapt to the planned, likely and unforeseen changes on the horizon.

Being ready for the future takes work, as does maintaining network quality-of-service levels, which draw rather than churn subscribers. Knowing your network is key and supporting it with the right configuration-management OSS will keep it running smoothly and trouble-free.

Borden is Granite Systems president & CEO.