By Sergio Pellizzari, Nakina Systems

In their quest for market share, telcos and MSOs have become serious competitors as each has crossed over their traditional market lines, leaving both to focus on triple play, quadruple play, Ethernet services to businesses, IPTV, video on demand and the digital home. Telcos have targeted residential services with fiber to the home initiatives like Verizon's FiOS and AT&T U-Verse.

The MSO companies realized that they needed to look beyond their traditional consumer video for expansion, since there are signs that this market has maxed out in terms of subscriber growth. In response, MSOs have used their backhaul technology to collect and target small and medium businesses and Cell Tower backhaul applications. This means that most MSOs continue to maintain an RF-centric access to the home network, as well as a backhaul network that is becoming more and more focused on delivering Ethernet services directly to businesses or, specifically, to provide cell tower backhaul services for wireless service providers.

There have been early signs of success from the MSOs, but one large factor remains: MSOs need not only a competitive offering, but an OSS infrastructure in order to provide the same level of service that a telco would provide for a similar offering. As operations for these services have become more complex, the OSS problem has grown exponentially. For the most part, OSS and business support systems have not consolidated to keep pace with the changes that have been made with technology across the industry.

Today's MSO networks have different OSS problems than the telcos face. They face a steep learning curve. Even though they have the technical competence to provide the service, they have to set up administration and support for some very demanding