Introduction to Telecom O/BSS

Introduction to Telecom
OSS/BSS and frameworks
Part -1
Ashutosh Tripathy (Solution Designer – British Telecom)
Ashutosh.tripathy@yahoo.com
1
By Ashutosh Tripathy

Agenda
 Short history of Telecommunications
 Evolution Telecom Frameworks
 TM Forum Frameworx
 2G/3G Network Architecture
 Network Elements
 Customer L2C Journey
 Why do we need support systems
 OSS and BSS
 Fulfilment Process
 Order management system
 Provisioning system
 Inventory management system
2

The history of Telecommunications
 Prehistoric Era: Fires, beacons, smoke signals, communication drums, horns
 BC - Mail, Pigeon post,
 1672 - First experimental acoustic (mechanical) telephone by Robert Hooke
 1844 - Electrical telegraph by Samuel B. Morse
 1876 - Telephones by Alexander Graham Bell
 1893 - Wireless telegraphy by Nikolai Tesla
 1895 - Radio by Marconi
 1927 - Television by Phillip T. Farnsworth
 1969 - Computer networking by ARPANET
 1973 - First modern-era mobile phone by Martin Cooper
 1982 - Email by Shiva Ayyadurai
 1983 - Internet by ARPANET
 2003 - VoIP Internet telephony
Interesting Watch:-
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLzgRU25tXM
3

Evolution Telecom Frameworks4
Before 1970
OSS activities
were performed
by manual
processes
1970 Onwards -
Computerized
Legacy
Applications
1990s - TMN
2000 - Next
Gen O/BSS

Telecom Management Network(TMN)
BML
SML
NML
EML
NEL
 Business Management Layer:-
To manage the overall business. E.g. Achieving ROI, market share,
employee satisfaction etc.
 Service Management Layer:-
Manage the service offered to the customer. E.g. Service quality, Cost,
Time to market etc.
 Network Management Layer:-
Manage the network and the systems that deliver the services. E.g.
Capacity, Diversity, Congestion etc.
 Element Management Layer:-
Manage the elements comprising the network.
 Network Element Layer:-
Switches, Transmission, disruption etc.
5
• The TMN reference model refers to a set of standards by the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) for the specification of a Telecommunications
Management Network
• The TMN hierarchy, is a reference model that specifies a set of management layers that
build on top of each other and address different abstractions of the management
space.

Challenges with legacy OSS:-
 Fast changing service
 Multimedia, gaming, Content
 Competition
 Wireline, MVNO, ISPs
 New Networks
 FTTP, 4G, All IP
 New technologies and standards
 SIP, XML, IMS, NGOSS
 Formation of TM Forum in 1988. TM
Forum is a non-profit industry
association for service providers
and their suppliers in the
telecommunications industry.
Members include
communications and digital
service providers, telephone
companies, cable operators,
network operators, software
suppliers, equipment suppliers,
systems integrators and
management consultancies.
6
Nextgen OSS/BSS

Introduction of TM Forum Frameworx
Frameworx is a suite of best practices and standards that when adopted enable a service-oriented,
highly automated and efficient approach to business operations. Frameworx provides hundreds of
standardized Business Metrics that have been embraced by the industry and allow for benchmarking,
as well as a suite of interfaces and APIs that enable integration across systems and platforms.
Frameworx also includes adoption best practices to help companies implement and use the
standards and management best practices to ensure ongoing conformance.
Advantages:-
 Innovate and reduce time-to-market with streamlined end-to-end service management
 Create, deliver and manage enterprise-grade services across a multi-partner value-chain
 Improve customer experience and retention using proven processes, metrics and maturity models
 Optimize business processes to deliver highly efficient, automated operations
 Reduce integration costs and risk through standardized interfaces and a common information
model
 Reduce transformation risk by delivering a proven blueprint for agile, efficient business operations
 Gain independence and confidence in your procurement choices through conformance
certification and procurement guides
 Gain clarity by providing a common, industry-standard language
7

TM Forum Frameworx
8

Business Process Framework(eTOM)9

10

Information Framework(SID)11

12

Application Framework(TAM)13

14

Integration Framework15

Key Metrics16

Best Practices17

2G/3G Network Architecture
18 Mobile Station
Subsystem
Base Station
Subsystem
Network Subsystem
(Switching System)
Other
Networks
SIM ME BTS BSC
Node
B
RNC GGSNSGSN
GMSC
MSC/
VLR
EIR HLR AUC
PSTN
PLMN
InternetSIM ME
SMSC

Network Elements
 BTS Base Transceiver System – Handles the transmission of signal and data(2G).
 BSC Base Station Controller – Controls the BTS (2G)
 RNC Radio Network Controller – Controls NodeBs(3G)
 EIR Equipment Identity Register – Maintains the active IMEIs (Whitelist, Black List and
Grey List)
 AUC Authentication Centre – Performs authentication
 HLR Home Location Register – Maintains all the subscriber data for an operator
 MSC Mobile Switching Center – Routes the voice calls to the intended BSC/RNC to
connect
 GMSC Gateway MSC – For routing the inter MSCs
 VLR Visitor Location Register – Maintains the subscribers currently connect to a MSC
(Including In Roamers)
 SMSC Short Message Service Centre – Equivalent of MSC for SMS
 GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node – Gateway between SGSN and Internet. Handles
connection to external world(Internet).
 SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node – Handles data sessions for browsing, video calls etc.
19

Customer L2C Journey20
•Walk in
•Self-care Portals
•SMS/APP
•Call Centers
Customer
Contact
•Feasibility Check
•Order validation
•Order Submit
Order
Placement
•Customer problem
Management
•Performance Mgmt
•Quality Mgmt
Assurance
•Order Orchestration
•Service Provisioning
•Inventory
Management
Order
Fulfilment
•Usage Tracking
•Mediation
•Rating
•Charging
•Billing
•RA & FM
Billing &
Revenue
Mgmt
•Invoice Dispatch
•Payment Collection
•Dunning
•Settlement
Payments

BSS
OSS
21
CRM
Order Fulfilment System
Provisioning
System
Inventory
Mgmt
System
Billing
System
Rating
System
Mediation
System
Online
Charging
System(OCS)
Core Network
Device
Mgmt
System
Product
catalogue
Network
Mgmt
System
FM
RA
Fault
Mgmt
System
Customer
Contact
Order
Placement
Order
Fulfilment
Assurance Billing Payments

OSS Landscape
The support systems handle the customer, the services that are offered to the customer and
the resources that offer the services.
 Support Systems to Manage the Customers:-
 Support Systems to Manage Service:-
 Support Systems to Manage Resources:-
22
Why do we need support systems?
OSS/BSS
Infrastructure Service Delivery
Manage Service & Business
Operation Support
System(Resource OSS)
Operation Support
System(Service OSS)
Business Support
System(BSS)

OSS and BSS
 OSS (Operational Support System):- Also described as the “Network System”
is the combination of systems dealing with the telecom network itself,
supporting operational work. Broadly the following sub systems.
 NW mgmt.
 Service Delivery
 Service Fulfilment
 Service Assurance
 BSS (Business Support System):- System that support business to directly serve
customers. Broadly the following subsystems.
 Revenue mgmt. – Billing, Charging, Settlement, payment, Mediation, RA, FM
 Customer mgmt. – CRM, PRM
 Product mgmt. – Service Creation, Product Catalogue, Marketing Solutions
 Order mgmt. – Order Orchestration system
23

Fulfilment Process24
Sales
Management
Inventory
Management
Order
Management
Service
Planning & Dev
Service
Provisioning
Network
Planning & Dev
Network
Development
Customer
Service
Network

Order management system
What is an order management system?
 Order Management systems are complex systems that allow customer or customer
service representatives to capture and process new orders, modify existing orders,
process customer moves and changes, price quotes and orders, validate orders, etc.,
while supporting multiple channels such as Web, Order template documents and
partner applications as well as multiple lines of businesses.
A simple Order journey:-
1. A customer goes to a service provider’s portal to add converged services to his or her
existing/new account.
2. The order management system verifies and processes the order based on its product
catalog (which is in sync with the product control center) and service catalog, then
decomposes and sends a service order to inventory system. The inventory system
allocates resources.
3. The order management system submits the order to an activation system.
4. The service activation system provisions the service and sends activation data to the
order management system.
5. The order management system notifies the simulated billing system that the new
product has been purchased by the customer and its services activated. The service
activation system also notifies the subscriber portal and CRM about a new subscription
to the service.
25

Order management system
26
Call
Center
Web
Portal
Walk In
Order
Order
Management
System
Billing
system
Inventory
system
Service
Activatio
n
Product
control
center
CRM
1
2
3 4
2
5
5
5
Customer
places order
Notifies that the new
product purchased
is services activated
to CRM
Processes
order
based on
product
catalogue
Notifies that the
new product
purchased is
services activated
to billing system.
Notifies that the new
product purchased
is services activated
SMS/APP
Assign Resources
Activation
Request is placed
Returns Activation
Data

Provisioning System
 Provisioning in the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to
provide services to the customers.
 Provisioning system decomposes and translates the request to MML(Man Machine
Language) commands and sends them to the respective network elements for
activation of service.
 The responsibility of a provisioning system includes Configuring an application,
Setting up parameters for security, Connectivity setup between elements,
Associating storage with server or application, configuring of network for
dynamically oriented transactions like authentication, accounting, and
authorization etc.
 To summarize, the provisioning system can do application provisioning, service
provisioning, resource/element/server provisioning, network provisioning, storage
provisioning, security provisioning, dynamic SLA-based provisioning, monitoring
provisioning and any other setup activities.
 Typically as OSS consists of multiple provisioning module, each specialized for a
specific activity. The goal of a good provisioning system is to minimize the manual
intervention as much as possible.
27

Provisioning System Architecture28
NW and
Element
Manager
Provisioning
System
Management
Plane
Wireless
Components
Access
Components
Transport
Components
Infrastructure
Plane
NW and
Element
Manager
NW and
Element
Manager
Provisioning Commands(MML)
Communication with
Component APIs

Inventory management System
 The inventory management system supports and interacts with multiple modules
relevant to fulfillment by keeping track of all the physical and logical assets and
allocating the assets to customers based on the services requested.
 Tracking inventory involves tracking equipment, facilities and circuits. Some examples of
information tracked are: the location and quantities of the equipment, how a piece of
equipment is configured and its status, etc.
 Broadly there are 2 types of assets that the inventory management systems track.
 Physical assets – Devices, Switches and other equipment
 Logical assets – Ports, circuit ids, ip addresses etc
Systems interacting with Inventory management system:-
 Order manager interacts with inventory manager (IM) to check if sufficient inventory
exists to complete an order.
 The purchase and sales module updates the IM with new assets added, old assets sold,
assets given to an outside party on rental, and assets that were borrowed from a third-
party vendor
 Provisioning module interacts with IM to work on allocated resources and also for
updating the status of allocated resources.
 The network manager contacts the IM to get static information on the resources being
monitored and managed by the network manager.
29

Inventory management System
30
Purchase & Sales
Mgmt. System
Provisioning
System
Order Mgmt.
System
Inventory Mgmt.
System
Network Mgmt.
System
Element
Manager
Element
Manager
Element
Manager
Transport
Elements
Access
Elements
Circuit
Elements

References
 https://www.tmforum.org/
 Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS by Jithesh Sathyan
 OSS/BSS FOR CONVERGED TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS: A PRACTICAL
APPROACH, 1st Edition (English, WARGAD)
 https://www.tutorialspoint.com/telecom_tutorials.htm
31

Thank You
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we often might
win, by fearing to attempt.” ― William Shakespeare
32

Introduction to Telecom O/BSS

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