Operations of a company require free flowing information & data to enable business processes to complete a task or goal. Within the telephone companies these systems are often termed as OSS or BSS. The BSS definitions largely refer to the interactions and processes of Billing Support Systems or customer relationship management. The OSS definition interacts with the operations of business or enterprise units to enable or support the services and the delivery mechanism.
Telco OSS systems contain data sources and elements such as Customer Information, Network Inventory, Equipment Inventory, Work Force Management, Service Offerings, Network & Service Monitoring, and others. The intent of this segment will focus on the relationship of remote users such as field techs or call center personel and how they access & utilize these data sources and process systems.
Some system sources seem obvious – such as Customer Information. But that single system defines 2 primary components, the exact location of the customer and where to send the bill. The customer location initiates the connection points of the Outside Plant Network to create a link from the Central Office to the customers address through the use of digital transport systems, or copper cable and pair configurations to deliver the services that can be enabled on the network.
The Services that ride on the network and the Network itself can be monitored for performance characteristics that allow both reactive and preventative actions to be analyzed, prioritized, and initiate automated processes or other OSS systems to take actions. This monitoring of the both the Service & the Network allow telcos to react to instantaneous conditions such as a Service outage for Voice Mail, and Network failures caused by cut cables or remote electronics failures in DLC or DSLAM locations. This ability to monitor inherently offers the reactive need to TEST the service or network as well.
Test systems are classified as either a monitoring test through a bridge, or intrusive test which generally breaks the service or network to isolate the condition to a point forward or back from the intrusion point. This is how customer problems are isolated through various test access points on the service and the network. As a customer contacts a repair call center, the call center agent assesses the customer description of the problem, and then initiates either service layer OSS data for evaluation, or creates connections to remote test access systems for network testing and isolation. This allows the properly trained workforce technician to be sent on the trouble report and ensures a fix of the problem on that single visit.
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