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Triple play deployment - Rising to the challenge
If triple play services are to achieve real commercial success for operators they must be provided seamlessly down a single ‘pipe’, argues Ian Roy
Until recently a new service provider technology would mostly likely aim to do the same thing as the technology it was replacing, but with greater efficiency and at less cost – and maybe include some extra service features.
This is no longer the case. Next generation network (NGN) introduction is proving to be as much about business transformation as it is about introducing new technologies. The development of so called triple play (voice, Internet access and IPTV) as the first set of next generation services, is focusing service providers' minds on the fact that the organisation as a whole has to think about services in a different way if the effort is to succeed.
The 'service catalog' approach to composing and managing services is now being seen as a crucial element in this transformation.
Developing a so-called triple play offering is the residential business development focus for many service providers worldwide and is seen as the way to compete with both other infrastructure-based service providers also capable of delivering packages of services; and with single-service competitors (such as DSL providers and discount telephone service operators).
A triple play package comprises high-speed Internet access, telephone and multi-channel TV service as a single, hopefully 'sticky', package of services that will promote customer loyalty: a one-stop-shop offer, priced attractively enough to prevent defection to single-service alternatives.
From the service provider perspective, the development of triple play is essential for long-term profitability as voice revenues diminish and other services (Internet access and multimedia entertainment) assume greater importance.
The problem is that actually delivering triple play throws up technical, operational and organisational challenges. To get triple play deployment right, service providers have not only to re-think the way they organise their crucial 'back office' infrastructure, but they must also re-think the way they organise themselves.
Currently, service providers are usually organised operationally in departments based on separate networks and technologies. These departments tend to act as information 'silos' (where information moves up and down within the department, but finds it difficult to escape to adjacent silos when it's needed). For customers, silos can mean telephone tag as they try to pin down a service problem. However, for the service provider itself, silos are a roadblock to next generation services, such as triple play, since information must flow freely across the old boundaries if the triple play approach is to work.
Acute problem
The problem is acute in the back office. Because service providers are used to delivering single services or sets of services across separate networks, each department (say switched voice or DSL/IP) tends to have its own operational support systems (OSSs) with only rudimentary connectivity to others. A 'converged' service, such as triple play, needs slick linkage between systems and represents a first glimpse of the telecoms business shaped by the NGN, where services all share – and must coexist within – a single logical pipe.
The challenge is provisioning and managing three services on the same physical and same logical pipe when all three make different, and sometimes conflicting, demands on the bearer service.
The solution has two key aspects. First, the provisioning process has to be smart. All three services, plus the underlying transport service, must be provisioned so they provide the right quality.
Second, service providers and their vendors can no longer develop this provisioning in silos because the systems have to handle the coexistence.
The problem is that service providers do not have a centralised provisioning mechanism and they do not necessarily have a well-developed definition of a service that could allow them to define how services should coexist.
That's where the service catalog comes in.
The catalog approach, used by NetCracker Technology, is a new way of understanding the business of telecoms. Three years ago it was still a foreign concept, but over the last 12 months, service providers have recognised the real need for this approach.
The catalog sees services broken down into their constituent parts and then reassembled, along with associated equipment, network resources, and business processes, into complete services or service packages. In place of separate networks – each with their own management and operational support systems – the catalog approach introduces the concept of mixing and matching the service components to run on top of the physical network.
Critical concept
This layering concept is critical. It recognizes that the network and the services must be understood in terms of layers and that understanding and managing the services as layered components increases re-usability and radically reduces the time it takes to introduce new services or make enhancements to old ones.
In the case of triple play, the catalog defines the underlying IP transport, which could be running over a variety of broadband network types – fibre, DSL, or even radio access. On top of the transport are three sets of services: IP connectivity to Internet, Voice over IP and IPTV.
The NetCracker systems involved in using the catalog structure include: Order Entry, Order Management, Inventory, Service Provisioning and Service Activation. The process starts with Order Entry where the critical specification of catalog components is defined. Responsibility is then handed to an Order Management application which figures out how to decompose what's been ordered and how to deliver it in the right order. Inventory assembles the components required and Service Provisioning defines the underlying transport service and the services, which ride on top, and how these should all be modified and tuned to enable their coexistence without quality-of-service problems. The Service Activation procedures must be defined to deal with the co-existence of the services.
Clearly, this new approach is more than a technical tweak. It demands a new way of thinking about services and how they should be handled by the entire organisation.
Where, in the old days, service providers completed detailed specifications and vendors 'dropped and ran', the relationship is much different with the implementation of NGN and its support systems.
As a technology supplier it's important to become an integral part of – not just running out these new services – but also in becoming involved in how the service provider organisation transforms itself to support them effectively.
Training is therefore key and with NetCracker it is part of the implementation process to work with the customers and the customers' end-users to ensure that the concepts and procedures are understood. In effect, NetCracker becomes a key part of the transformation with its people planted right inside the service provider to support the process.
Today, different service providers are at different stages in their migration towards the single pipe. For instance, cable providers in the US typically offer a triple play with Internet and voice on the same logical pipe, but with video separated. Meanwhile, European cable companies have a separate voice network and a broadband network for delivering TV and Internet. Many service providers deliver Internet and TV over the digital portion of the pipe, but maintain a conventional analogue telephone service at a different frequency.
But the final destination is clear.
Service providers have to decrease the time it takes to introduce new services and if they do not follow the concept of layering services using these components, then their mean times between introducing new services is not going to change.
While nobody really knows what services are going to look like five years from now, what is clear is that everyone has to use this layering and catalog concepts to be able to quickly build new services and bring them to market. •
Ian Roy is Vice President, Product Management, NetCracker. He can be contacted via tel: +1 781-419-3300; e-mail: ian.roy@netcracker.com
www.netcracker.com
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