When Internet protocol (IP) telephony first burst onto the communications market in 1995, technological gurus hailed it as a revolutionary discovery and the beginning of a new era in communications. Consumers and businesses eagerly embraced this new technology, not surprisingly enamoured with the concept of free telephone calls. Unfortunately, while IP telephony was ahead of its time, it was woefully behind its hype. Users soon discovered that voice transmission was poor, service was spotty, security was weak and the costs of replacing their existing equipment were exorbitant.

Today, however, few would deny that the long-awaited IP telephony has finally come of age. The technology and products have greatly improved, and the world of e-commerce has generated an insatiable demand for this technology. In five short years, the IP telephony market has evolved into a sophisticated business, dominated by billion-dollar corporations providing service to carriers and millions of individual consumers and businesses.

---

Without appropriate provisioning and
resource management tools,
IP telephony service providers are unable
to manage an ever-expanding
international network and customer base.

---

Service providers looking to capitalize on this new technology are scurrying to develop IP telephony products, but the competitive environment has also changed in the last few years. The tremendous potential for making easy money from international toll arbitrage has subsided, and deregulation is reshaping the market. At the same time, margins are shrinking due to pressure from traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) carriers, who are pushing IP telephony service providers to improve their operational efficiency and find new sources of revenue. In fact, it is now widely believed that IP telephony service providers will garner a significant amount of future revenues by offering creative and ever-changing bundles of services.

As such, today's service providers need much more than a snappy IP telephony product to compete. They need a flexible and scalable back-office support system to ensure that they can generate maximum revenues for minimum costs while consistently delivering cutting-edge IP telephony services. The answer is a flexible IP telephony-centric operational support system (OSS). With the right OSS behind them, service providers have an operationally efficient means of getting to market fast and riding the wave of the IP revolution.

Identify the challenges

Along with new opportunities, IP telephony also presents service providers with a whole new set of operational challenges. Service providers who want to offer IP telephony need a powerful and efficient tool for handling the complicated details of service provisioning. They need an inventory management tool for building comprehensive network models, and tracking and managing IP-specific assets and access numbers. Without a means of simplifying the tasks of provisioning and resource management, IP telephony service providers will not be able to manage an ever-expanding international network and customer base.

The key operational challenges facing today's IP telephony service providers are

	Maximizing operational efficiencies Improve the management and flow of customer and service information Make effective use of network inventory, and number and IP address inventory
	Lowering operating costs Minimize customer support staff Automate repetitive manual tasks Provide customer self ordering and trouble management capability
	Streamlining the ordering process Simplify the order-taking process Standardize order management processes with best practices Provide near real-time automatic service activation Integrate disparate support systems into an end-to-end solution
	Managing an international network of customers, affiliates and assets Support international circuit standards Support international telephone numbering standards Support international address formats
	Supporting a range of IP telephony, Internet and broadband services Support existing Internet services and emerging IP telephony services Provide flexible service bundling
	Integrating order management, number and IP address management, network inventory management and maintenance capabilities

With all of these unique challenges, IP telephony service providers need an OSS that is designed for their specific needs. A true IP telephony-centric OSS will enable the service provider to

	Model the network and manage resource availability
	Manage IP addresses, access numbers and calling areas
	Model the relationships between customers, assets, IP addresses and access numbers
	Support international circuit standards and telephone numbering standards
	Support a rich set of application programming interfaces (API), which integrate with other solutions to provide: Near real-time billing Near real-time service activation Automatic network configuration Customer self service Service level agreement (SLA) management

Follow the trends

Because the IP market is growing so rapidly, the climate of the market—today and tomorrow—must be considered when selecting an OSS.

In 1999 and 2000 the IP telephony industry has experienced global expansion, with the leading service providers aggressively establishing points of presence (POP) in international cities to extend their geographical coverage. Many of these new deployments have been the result of "affiliate programs" focused on establishing relationships with local service providers in international locales.

Beyond 2000, fundamental changes in the industry will occur. Broadly speaking, the most significant trends will be

	The widespread availability of advanced communication services, such as unified communications
	The extension of IP to the local exchange providing full convergence of voice and data

These trends will be enabled by two key developments currently underway: the continued emergence of a new three-tiered distributed network model to replace the traditional circuit switching model, and the full integration of the IP telephony network with the traditional SS7 signaling network.

The three-tiered distributed network model has the following structure:

	A standards-based packet infrastructure layer
	An open call control layer
	An open service application layer

The open service application layer, comprised of programmable systems, will enable service providers to rapidly create customer services independent of hardware vendors.

The second development, the full integration of the IP telephony network with the traditional SS7 signaling network, will allow seamless integration with the PSTN network to leverage existing resources and provide a migration towards full end-to-end IP communications.

IP telephony is evolving quickly. The market has changed significantly in the last five years, and the next five years will prove to be even more tumultuous. Service providers will have to depend on the flexibility of their OSSs to see them through future developments.

Asking the right questions

We've come a long way since the first voice communication was delivered over the Internet in 1995. What began as more of a technological dream is finally a technological reality, and the potential is enormous. No one can predict exactly how the IP telephony revolution will unfold or what technological advances will be achieved using it. Only one thing is certain: service providers will be introducing new technologies and services at an astounding rate.

The only way that IP telephony service providers will be able to manage in the future is through innovation and by using an OSS that supports that innovation. Service providers must consider whether the OSS they choose will be able to keep up and whether the OSS supplier is willing to adapt. Ideally, the system should be data driven, and the service provider should have control of that data. They must understand the data model; can it be extended? what does it take to model a new service?

---

Superior IP telephony OSS vendors
are focused and knowledgeable.
They know that a one-size-fits-all
solution won't work in an
IP telephony environment.

---

Superior IP telephony OSS vendors are focused and knowledgeable about the IP telephony market segment. They do not use a one-size-fits-all solution, and they understand that a traditional circuit-switched voice provider system is not going to meet the needs of an IP telephony provider. They are committed to becoming business partners. Together, the OSS vendor and the IP telephony provider work for mutual benefit to improve both products and services.

From Current OSS, Winter 2001, Vol. 2, No. 2. Published by Eftia OSS Solutions.