Conference Program

Abstract

Next Generation Network (NGN) technologies promise two propositions:

• Opening up new service revenue streams by enabling innovative new services
  and service bundles (e.g. triple play)
• Lowering product unit costs through the use of common access and network
  technologies that potentially minimize costly network layers

However, the transition from legacy network to NGN will involve significant investment
and take many years to accomplish.

It is essential that Communication Service Providers (CSP) maintain a clear customer
and product focus during this transition and manage the rate of transition to optimize the
network and system investment. By doing this, CSPs can ensure maximum profitability
during transition and not just wait for the reward at the end of the journey.

CSPs have spent significant time and money on existing network infrastructure and
OSS systems to support their business. A successful transition strategy will establish a
service-oriented OSS framework that leverages this investment while favoring and
accelerating the adoption of NGN technologies in a controlled manner.

The recommended approach is to introduce the flexibility of service independence from
network design. Such an approach must support not only the end-state but also the
intermediate state where customer services need to be provisioned across a mix of
current and legacy networks and systems.

This paper discusses how CSPs, in transition to NGN, can exploit the full value of their
network inventory assets and manage migration to new technologies and systems by
employing a service-oriented, automated and rules-based provisioning abstraction
layer. Moreover it addresses how CSPs can achieve significantly improved profitability
before complete data migration and/or step-function OSS rationalization.