Triple-play: The Hype and the Reality (Cont'd)

Quality of service (QoS) will be a major consideration, and companies are already positioning themselves to provide it. Sandburst Corporation, for example, has begun offering their TME-2000 traffic manager device to early adopters, designed to accelerate the delivery of triple-play services and provide fine-grained per-subscriber QoS across Ethernet networks. The device gives carriers the ability to achieve per-user, per-application, and per-flow bandwidth control, as well as service prioritization - all essential elements for delivering real-time voice, video, and data services over a carrier-grade Ethernet network.

The Next-Generation OSS
Telcos will need to extract profit and differentiate themselves any way they can. The back office is the most logical place to start. Offering streamlined billing services, quick provisioning with no long wait times, and excellent customer service is what's going to put a telco on top - not offering the triple-play itself.

Ideally, the NGOSS for triple-play should be able to keep operations expenses down by consolidating billing and provisioning for all three services. The heart of development for the NGOSS is the TeleManagement Forum (TMF), which is promoting a NGOSS standard for easy to integrate and manage OSS components. According to the Forum, the NGOSS defines "a comprehensive, integrated framework for developing, procuring, and deploying operational and business support systems and software." Now in release 4.5, the TMF's NGOSS is really just a framework for complex delivery architectures, which addresses the need for interoperable, unified OSSs that manage multiple services under the same management umbrella.

Staying with Single-play?
According to Joel Cooper, Analyst at Pyramid Research, there is still a business case for single-play providers. In addition to single-play providers staying in business by making strategic alliances, Cooper suggests that "at the end of the day, not everybody wants to take three services. Not everybody is interested in video on demand or expanded channel range.

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