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Standards: The International Language of Commerce and Love


ComIT and the OSS/BSS segments have reached a level of maturity and widespread adoption that demands agreement on a set of technical standards that meet the evolving needs of not only CSPs, but the larger international economy.

Standards Encourage a Global Economy

In 2007 Telekom Malaysia signed a "public-private partnership" with the Malaysian government to build a national broadband network-in 18 months, including the OSS/BSS infrastructure-offering high-speed access to more than two million homes. Telekom Malaysia selected and proceeded to work with the OSS/BSS vendors in April 2009; the CSP had a few months to prepare the operations and supporting systems.

An Analysys Mason case study noted that Telekom Malaysia originally approached the scheme as a greenfield project, but because of time and cost constraints the systems were built on existing technology. This meant that OSS and BSS components were selected on the basis of not only a reference customer for the product but also references for the system integrations that the architecture required, according to Nizam Arshad, Vice President of Group IT at Telekom Malaysia.

IT purchasers are wiser to the timelines of a project without interoperability expectations, and international operators faced with rolling out broadband and other services to millions of people at a time are going to require more assurance. Factor in the language barriers on top of potential technological ones and the importance of standards is increasingly compounded.

Standards enable these rapid turnaround projects with the use of convenient, road-tested, cost-effective COTS solutions. Operators like Telekom Malaysia must look for OSS/BSS systems that will integrate seamlessly with existing technology-and with no room in the timeline, or budget, for error.

Widely adopted sets of standards agreed upon by an industry are nothing new. ComIT and the OSS/BSS segments have reached a level of maturity and widespread adoption that demands agreement on a set of technical standards that meet the evolving needs of not only CSPs but the larger international economy.

"The international language of commerce is standards," former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald L. Evans says. "Adherence to agreed-upon product or service specifications underpins international commerce, enabling trillions of dollars of goods to flow across borders regardless of the spoken language of any business parties. The common acceptance of standards is fundamental to the success of robust, fair and free trade. Without standards it would be difficult to imagine the tremendous volume and complexity of international trade."



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