Shaving seconds, saving millions: OSS/BSS's role in telecom's time revolution

Time mastery in telecom: The strategic edge of OSS/BSS

Removing those biases for a moment, we believe the entire OSS / BSS market is responsible for catalysing the fundamental shift underway in modern telco environments - from a hardware-dominant paradigm to a software-centric ecosystem. Geoff Hollingworth's insights into the telecom industry's metamorphosis underscore this transition, where time is not just a metric but one of the most significant contributors to both cost savings and competitive advantage. Geoff asks, “Is there a simple telecom time calculation that can be applied? If a manual job can be done in half the time, cost savings are 50%, 100% contributing to the bottom line. If a manual job can be automated then time can be destroyed along with cost.”

The narrative of OSS/BSS solutions is intricately woven into the hardware to software transformation, offering a blueprint for agility, automation and continuous innovation, but even more importantly in better use of available time; both in terms of reducing the time taken to perform vital customer-centric actions, but also reducing manual effort to free up time for more valuable activities by human resources.

OSS/BSS solutions, traditionally seen as the back-office workhorses, are now thrust into the limelight, driving efficiency gains through automation and integration. In the not-too-distant future, they’re also likely to use newer techniques, such as Generative AI, to act as advanced assistants that make human workers more efficient. 

The automation of manual processes 

The automation of manual processes is precisely where OSS/BSS excel—turning time-consuming tasks into instant, digital transactions. OSS systems streamline service management, network operations and service fulfilment, while BSS can expedite billing, customer management and the time to release new (or updated) product offerings. By automating these areas, OSS/BSS solutions significantly reduce operational time and costs, echoing the argument for software over hardware as the primary cost influencer.

The concept of disaggregation (modularity) allows network operators to separate their network's hardware from its controlling software, allowing for independent evolution. OSS/BSS solutions, combined with operators’ increasing use of IT innovations, are at the forefront of this movement. Collectively, they offer flexible platforms that integrate with a wide array of hardware, yet are no longer shackled by the hardware lifecycle. For example, this independence means that telecom operators can roll out new services and updates at the speed of software development, less constrained by the hardware procurement and deployment cycles of our recent past.

Time-centric telecom transformation: The impact of OSS/BSS innovation

Hollingworth's assertion that software projects are continuous aligns with the modern development practices that OSS/BSS have adopted widely; principally, the DevOps and CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) paradigms. These methodologies enable telecom operators to introduce features, evolve processes, perform updates and fix issues in real-time, vastly reducing the time-to-market for new services and responding to customer needs with unprecedented speed.

Even as automation and the threat of AI takes centre stage, the role of the human workforce has the potential to evolve in important ways rather than diminishing. Professionals are re-skilling to engage with OSS / BSS solutions, overseeing the automation processes. People also remain an important cog in the overall process of ensuring that systems operate seamlessly and with accuracy. As we’ve always been, people are the architects of change, designing and refining the software that propels the telecom industry forward.

Against the clock: How OSS/BSS solutions are winning the telecom time war

As Hollingworth insightfully noted in his article, time is the most significant challenge to competitiveness. Well-designed OSS / BSS solutions offer a direct response to this challenge by enabling service providers to rapidly adapt to market changes and consumer demands. The agility afforded by OSS / BSS systems means that operators are not just reacting to the market but can proactively leverage the hardware to software metamorphosis to shape it, introducing innovative services and pricing models that set them apart.

Telcos know that software shapes their destiny and are reconstructing their organisations (and people) to become more software-centric. There’s one thing that many telcos could easily overlook due to the curse of familiarity – they already have the ultimate telco software in their arsenal. In the race against time, a well-honed OSS / BSS stack is one of the telecom industry's most potent weapons, turning the ticking clock into a symphony of time improvements.