Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

U Mobile renews BSS with Ericsson

U Mobile renews Business Support System deal with Ericsson. Ericsson has further extended its partnership with U Mobile Sdn Bhd to transform the Malaysian telecommunications service provider’s Business Support System (BSS) into an industrialized, real-time converged environment. Originally signed in 2012, the partnership has been extended for another five years until 2022. In the ongoing contract, Ericsson is responsible for competence development, solution design, deployment and…

21/01/2018 No Comments

Germany’s Tele Columbus Selects Netcracker

Netcracker's Solution to Provide Tele Columbus Group With Comprehensive Billing and Charging Capabilities Across B2B and B2C. Netcracker Technology announced that Tele Columbus has selected Netcracker's Revenue Management solution as the single billing and charging system for the entire Tele Columbus Group, which has grown substantially following its acquisition of Primacom and Pepcom. The scope of Netcracker's solution covers both B2B and B2C markets and will…

20/01/2018 No Comments

The developer development analogy (to OSS investment)

In a post last week, we quoted Jim Rohn who said, "You can have more – if you become more." Jim was surely speaking about personal growth, but we equated it to OSS needing to become more too, especially by looking beyond the walls of operations. Your first thoughts may be, "Ohh, good idea, I'd love to get my hands on some of the CMO's budget…

19/01/2018 No Comments

The evolving complexity of RCA

Root cause analysis (RCA) is one of the great challenges of OSS. As you know, it aims to identify the probable cause of an alarm-storm, where all alarms are actually related to a single fault. In the past, my go-to approach was to start with a circuit hierarchy-based algorithm. If you had an awareness of the hierarchy of circuits, usually through an awareness in inventory, if…

18/01/2018 No Comments

What is your OSS answer : question ratio?

Experts know a lot.... obviously. They have lots of answers... obviously. There are lots of OSS experts. Combined, they know A LOT!! Powerful indeed, but not sure if that's what we need right now. I feel like we're in a bit of an OSS innovation funk. The biggest improvements in OSS are coming from outside OSS - extrinsic improvement. Where's the intrinsic improvement coming from? Do…

17/01/2018 1 Comment

Customers don’t invest in OSS. What do they invest in?

"An organisation buys an OSS, not because it wants an Operational Support System, but because it wants Operational Support." So if our customers are not investing in our OSS, what are they actually investing in? Easy! They're investing in the ability to solve their own problems and opportunities in future. If we don't actually understand operations, what chance do we have to deliver operational support? We…

16/01/2018 No Comments

Nokia wins five-year managed services agreement with Optus

Nokia wins five-year managed services agreement to manage Optus' network. Nokia and Optus have signed a five-year agreement under which Nokia will manage and maintain key components of Optus' network infrastructure, operations and field maintenance. As part of the contract, Nokia and Optus will develop a Network Operations Centre (NOC), building on global best practices and leveraging local talent to deliver higher performance networks. Consumers are…

16/01/2018 No Comments

The exposure effect can work for or against OSS projects

The exposure effect (no, not the one circulating through Hollywood) has a few interesting implications for OSS. "The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them." Wikipedia In effect, it's the repetition that drills familiarity, comfort, but also bias, into our sub-conscious. Repetition doesn't make a piece of information true, but…

15/01/2018 No Comments

If the customer thinks they have a problem, they do have a problem

Omni-channel is an interesting concept because it generates two distinctly different views. The customer will use whichever channel (eg digital, apps, contact-centre, IVR, etc) that they want to use. The service provider will try to push the customer onto whichever channel suits the service provider best. The customer will often want to use digital or apps, back-ended by OSS - whether that's to place an order,…

12/01/2018 No Comments

Funding beyond the walls of operations

“You can have more - if you become more.” Jim Rohn. I believe that this is as true of our OSS as it is of ourselves. Many people use the name Operational Support Systems to put an electric fence around our OSS, to limit uses to just operational activities. However, the reach, awareness and power of what they (we) offer goes far beyond that. We have…

11/01/2018 No Comments

When low OSS performance is actually high performance

"It's not unusual for something to be positioned as the high performance alternative. The car that can go 0 to 60 in three seconds, the corkscrew that's five times faster, the punch press that's incredibly efficient... The thing is, though, that the high performance vs. low performance debate misses something. High at what? That corkscrew that's optimized for speed is more expensive, more difficult to operate…

10/01/2018 No Comments

The 10 minute / 1 minute / 10 second Agile OSS challenge

Check out the video below, which gives an example of the 10 minute / 1 minute / 10 second challenge (you can check out more of them here). When given 10 minutes to sketch Spiderman, the result is far richer than when the artist is given only 10 seconds... well obviously!! But let me pose a question. If Sketch B was compiled from 60 sequential 10s…

09/01/2018 No Comments

The double-edged sword of OSS/BSS integrations

"...good argument for a merged OSS/BSS, wouldn't you say?" John Malecki. The question above was posed in relation to Friday's post about the currency and relevance of OSS compared with research reports, analyses and strategic plans as well as how to extend OSS longevity. This is a brilliant, multi-faceted question from John. My belief is that it is a double-edged sword. Out of my experiences with…

08/01/2018 No Comments

Keeping the OSS executioner away

"With the increasing pace of change, the moment a research report, competitive analysis, or strategic plan is delivered to a client, its currency and relevance rapidly diminishes as new trends, issues, and unforeseen disrupters arise." Soren Kaplan. By the same token as the quote above, does it follow that the currency and relevance of an OSS rapidly diminishes as soon as it is delivered to a…

05/01/2018 No Comments

The future of telco / service provider consulting

"Change happens when YOU and I DO things. Not when we argue." James Altucher. We recently discussed how ego can cause stagnation in OSS delivery. The same post also indicated how smart contracts potentially streamline OSS delivery and change management. Along similar analytical lines, there's a structural shift underway in traditional business consulting, as described in a recent post contrasting "clean" and "dirty" consulting. There's an…

04/01/2018 No Comments

I found a way to save ten million dollars

Yesterday's post about egos in OSS contained the following Dilbert cartoon: . It reminded me of a story from many years ago. I was working in a developing country, advising the board of a tier-one telco on the implementation of their first-ever OSS (they'd only ever operated their networks at NMS level previously). During the analysis phase I came across some data that showed an interesting…

03/01/2018 No Comments

Bad OSS ego decisions

"A long, long time ago Dennis Haslinger told me that most of the most serious mistakes I would make in life would be bad ego decisions. I have found that to be true." Gary Halbert. OSS is an industry filled with highly intelligent people. In every country I've visited to work on OSS assignments, perhaps excluding Vietnam, my colleagues have been predominantly male. Dare I say…

02/01/2018 No Comments

A deeper level of OSS connection,

Yesterday we talked about the cuckoo-bird analogy and how it was preventing telcos from building more valuable platforms on top of their capital-intensive network platforms. Thanks to Dean Bubley, it gave examples of how the most successful platform plays were platforms on platforms (eg Microsoft Office on Windows, iTunes on iOS, phones on physical networks, etc). The telcos have found it difficult to build the second…

22/12/2017 No Comments

OSS that keep the cuckoos out of the nest

"The cuckoo bird is infamous for laying its eggs in other birds' nests. The young cuckoos grow much faster than the rightful occupants, forcing the other chicks out - if they haven't already physically knocked the other eggs overboard. (See "brood parasitism", here). Analogies exist quite widely in technology - a faster-growing "tenant" sometimes pushes out the offspring of the host. Arguably Microsoft's original Windows OS…

21/12/2017 No Comments

To reduce OSS dark data (or not)?

Dark data is the name for data that is collected but never used. lt's said that 96-98% of all data is dark data (not that I can confirm or deny those claims). Dark data forms the bottom layer in the DIKW hierarchy below (image sourced from here). What would the dark data percentage be within OSS do you think? Or more specifically, your OSS? If you're…

20/12/2017 No Comments

Zain Saudi Arabia delivers during Hajj with Nokia SON software

Zain Saudi Arabia delivers a superior experience during Hajj and Ramadan with Nokia software. Using Nokia's EdenNet SON software, Zain Saudi Arabia effectively managed the surge in data and voice traffic in Makkah and Medina during the Hajj and Ramadan, allowing pilgrims to remain connected and share their journey with loved ones. Large public events or gatherings generate significant pressure on mobile networks, challenging service providers…