Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 11

	This Month's Issue:
	Confronting Fraud and Malice

COMPTEL Plus - Light on the OSS/BSS?

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establishing more visible market presence. I am not sure how far the integration goes below the marketing layer. It does not seem to extend to full integration of the networks and it would be interesting to understand the revenue sharing model where a circuit crosses network and carrier boundaries. Where customers require end-to-end performance measurement and “one stop” service who and how is this provided? Some homework is required for this writer.

The Economy

No operator is immune to economic conditions. If the economic environment doesn’t affect companies directly through the higher cost of capital, it certainly affects their customers and can result in a reduction in new sales and cancellation of existing services, which means less revenue. If the economy is not in recession today, then it certainly is in “slow down.” How was this viewed at the show? The tone seemed somewhat philosophical. Economies go through cycles. This is a downturn not unlike previous downturns. The view was that although companies may cut back on many things, communications is not typically one of them. In fact growth through these times is often experienced, as less travel results in more phone calls, conference calls, video conferences, and web conferences, all consumers of network capacity.

The other aspect of this is the cost of capital. In this environment, is it possible to access the capital needed to grow your network and extend your business? The answer from the CEO panel at COMPTEL was a qualified “yes.” If you have a healthy balance sheet you can get access to money: it’s expensive but available. The qualification stated by Randy Curran, CEO of Deltacom, was that capital up to $100 million was available for specific initiatives but you could have trouble if you were chasing larger numbers.

OSS/BSS

As stated in my opening, there was not a lot of discussion around OSS/BSS, which may be a result of the “wholesale” flavor of the show. Retail telcos sometimes get very excited about their CRM, ordering, provisioning, network management, and billing systems but this was not evident here. Although BSS/OSS specifics were not high on the discussion list, I did spend time with a couple of vendors on the Expo floor who caught my eye.

Streamcore is a solution for monitoring and managing IP traffic over MPLS networks. It originated in France Telecom and has now found a second home in California. The software allows the data streams to be interrogated for reporting and monitoring

If the economic environment doesn’t affect companies directly through the higher cost of capital, it certainly affects their customers and can result in a reduction in new sales and cancellation of existing services, which means less revenue.

purposes. It also has the ability to apply policies for specific services. The software is one of an emerging generation of applications that is delivered as an appliance and can be quickly integrated into an all-IP environment.

By contrast, the Martin Group has been around for a while now (since 1970) and still doing well delivering a more traditional range of OSS/BSS solutions to a loyal customer base. They have been busy extending their OMNIA and OASIS solutions for the Tier 2 /3 market to cover a broad functional footprint – from customer care and billing to activation and network management. The aim is to provide everything a network service provider needs in just a couple of fully integrated software packages, which is an attractive proposition for smaller operators.

Bottom Line

After every show we question the value of taking a number of days out of the office, paying the show entry, and forking out for flights and hotels. So was the COMPTEL Plus Spring 2008 Convention worth it? For me it was. For anyone interested in getting a sense of what’s going on in the industry, well-run shows like COMPTEL, attended by a healthy mix of service provider people as well as vendors, continue to perform a much-needed role. Only at a well-attended gathering of industry decision makers can you tune into the vibe of the business today. My sense is that despite the prospect of a sticky economy, regulatory concerns and competitive pressures, the vibe at this show was positive and determined. People were discussing important subjects and taking things seriously, in well-managed sessions. Presenters were knowledgeable, and people asked intelligent questions, which is not always the case at trade shows. I’ll be back next year.

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