In the early days of my career, I was the stereotypical Engineer. I'd get into a project, do the best job I possibly could from a technical perspective, and then get out to move onto the next project. Looking back, I unfortunately had blinkers on through those years. I've been lucky to have retained some great friendships from those days, but I also didn't put any…
Read More »As we all know, data quality can be a big problem for OSS, at almost every operator around the world. A lot of this problem stems from the fact that most telcos have a lot of passive infrastructure / objects in their networks. Passive devices don't tend to have programmatic interfaces that allows for current status or details to be polled. This makes it easy for…
Read More »The \#Adtran #FibreBroadband Symposium was held in Melbourne on 3rd August 2022.This video link below shows the presentation we made at the conference: It's designed specifically for network builders, to show the relevance that OSS and BSS have for their worlds. It also shows a very high level view of OSS past, present and future - including four possible future scenarios covering: Private Networks Digital Twins and Sensor…
Read More »Artificial Intelligence is purported to be the panacea for so many high-volume factors within telco. For example, AI is being used for complex pattern recognition using diverse signal streams like churn reduction. AIOps solutions are making great strides to reducing noise within alarm / event lists, filtering and automating, to limit the number of decisions to be made by humans. We're also seeing AIOps equivalent solutions…
Read More »We've regularly discussed how RFPs / PoCs are usually an inefficient way of finding new products or partners for your OSS (see this link). They're often ineffient regardless of whether you're a supplier, buyer or integrator. They tend to be expensive and time-consuming for all involved. The short paper shown below by Peter Willis, the ex-Chief Researcher at BT, provides a really insightful insider's perspective as…
Read More »Earlier this week we talked about the data management challenge being solved, for the most part. However, we still have large gaps in the decision support challenge, mostly because we don't have tools to help us understand the complex "systems / environments" in which decisions need to be made. I thought the graph below might help to further articulate this thought. Source: Rohde and Schwarz Our…
Read More »A discussion with an OSS vendor last week reminded me of an article, and a lecture by Mark Zangari that inspired it, which is now nearly 10 years old. It's worth revisiting because the challenges described are still relevant for OSS today, still not adequately resolved. At the time, Mark described for his audience at SFU that the data management problem had largely been solved (which is…
Read More »A recent article here talked about re-imagining the planning and design process for telco networks. We've also been heavily involved with the use of drones to help deliver new ways of working in the telco industry lately too. With those two concepts still fresh in our memory, this article about flying COWs from AT&T really struck a chord. But what is a COW? Clearly not the…
Read More »When you see those two acronyms above, GIS and BIM, do you immediately grasp what this post is going to be about? Do you know what both of those acronyms represent? Their relevance to OSS? They're not exactly widespread OSS terms. Many would be familiar with GIS (Geographic Information Systems). We've all seen OSS data, especially network topologies, overlaid onto map / GIS views. How about…
Read More »In a recent article, we posed many ideas about how future OSS solutions might be re-imagined. We looked into how new approaches and technologies like AR (Augmented Reality) might change solutions and ways-of-working in the near future. This article triggered a conversation about next-generation planning systems with a couple of very clever OSS, orchestration and integration experts. This conversation thread convinced us to take a closer…
Read More »These are two questions I've often pondered in the context of OSS / telco data, but never had a definitive answer to. I just spotted a new report from CEBR on LinkedIn that helps to provide quantification. What Exactly Is Real-time? When it comes to managing large, complex networks, having access to real-time data is a non-negotiable. I've always found it interesting to hear what people…
Read More »I have a few automated job searches set up for OSS roles. Not because I'm looking for a job (just projects), but to keep an eye on what the markets are looking for and what's trending that I might not be aware of yet. A really interesting role popped up on one of these searches this morning:https://www.seek.com.au/job/56858624 No idea which company it's for, but it's the…
Read More »An updated call for innovation in the OSS industry We are currently living through a revolution for the OSS/BSS industry and the customers that we serve. It’s not a question of if we need to innovate, but by how much and in what ways. Change is surrounding us and impacting us in profound ways, triggered by new technologies, business models, design & delivery techniques, customer expectations…
Read More »The OSS we've been building for the last 30+ years aren't too dissimilar to the digital twins the world is getting all excited by today. I find it really interesting, not just because of the buzz, but because the term "digital twin" seems to mean different things to different people. Having seen what OSS are capable of, I'm somewhat underwhelmed by what people are calling their…
Read More »When people talk about the value of OSS data, the discussion invariably turns to privacy and some of the unconscionable things already done with our personal data. Off the top of my head, I can't remember any telcos blatantly misusing the highly privileged information they have access to. This is possibly a double-edged sword. It hints at the trust that has been earned over decades by…
Read More »The broken watch analogy. When the second hand on your analog watch stops moving, you’ll quickly realise that your watch has broken. You’ll know exactly what to do next. You won’t assume that time is broken or is somehow standing still. You’ll immediately recognise that your watch needs fixing, re-winding or replacing. A watch is an amazing piece of machinery, with a level of complexity that…
Read More »I'm delighted to share with you that Houlihan Lokey, a global investment bank, has just launched the most comprehensive market analysis I've seen covering connectivity software including OSS / BSS. I'm possibly biased though as I've been lucky enough to have played a small part in its direction and content. Most of the reports that I've seen from this sector cover 20-30 organisations at best. This Houlihan…
Read More »Are you a dyed-in-the-wool telco person? Has your whole career, or a majority of it, been built around the telco industry? If your career in telco were to cease tomorrow, what would you do next? As we mentioned in our previous article on "Burning Platforms", the orange curve of the traditional telco business is trending towards an asymptote (see the orange curve in the diagram below).…
Read More »I have a couple of really interesting videos to share with you today. I think they're both brilliant, though perhaps I'm biased because they largely reinforce thoughts I already share with the stars of each video. Well, reinforce, but they also significantly expand the thinking with some enlightening dots that I hadn't previously connected. Nobody is going out on a limb to suggest that our lives…
Read More »You may have noticed in a recent post that I've been contributing to the Transformation Project Framework (TPF) with TM Forum (document GB1011). It's an important initiative that aims to help ease the stress and reduce the risk on complex OSS/BSS transformation projects. In conjunction with the TM Forum and the Transformation User Guide (TUG) team, we're about to deliver a webinar where you will have…
Read More »You've probably noticed the great tower sell-off trend that's underway (see this article by Robert Clark as an example). Actually, I should call it the sell-off / lease-back trend because carriers are selling their towers, but leasing back space on the towers for their antennae, radio units, etc. Let's look at this trend through the lens of two of my favourite OSS books (that mostly have…
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