TM Forum Singapore: Thinking Outside the Traditional Telecom Service Box

By Ek Heng
Telecommunications Online
January 20, 2009

Irrespective where they ope rate, service providers face the same problems that are addressed by the TM Forum which held its first event to start off its 2009 program with a recent two-day conference in Singapore.

Speaking at the Management World Asia event, president and chief technology officer of TM Forum, Martin Creaner highlighted the point that the North American telecom industry revenues are being eclipsed for the first time in 2008 by the Asian telecom sector.

Asia’s success notwithstanding, the region faces a challenging year with accelerating need to streamline processes and reduce expenditure, he said, hence the theme adopted for the Singapore event was ‘business transformation through cost reduction, process improvements and delivery of new services.' It brings into perspective and updates participants on the transformation needed by service providers to look beyond traditional telecom services.

In addition to case studies where speakers shared their experience in adopting best practices, frameworks and software standards promoted by TM Forum, some of Asia’s leading telecom operators were on hand to provide insights on their strategies to generate new business streams made possible by technology changes.

Crafting a quad-play

In a keynote paper, Dr Liang T Wu, executive vice-president of Hong Kong-based PCCW Limited explained the telco’s strategy in using its strength in fixed line infrastructure to transform itself into a telco offering quad-play and integrated media services. Recognizing that revenue growth from traditional voice and data services is not a sustainable business model, PCCW developed the infrastructure to offer broadband Internet and IPTV using its fixed-line infrastructure. What’s more, the operator moved quickly to make available the same services on its mobile network.

By introducing transaction services for subscribers to buy cinema ticket online, for example, using any of its devices — television, computer-on-broadband, cellular phone and a new fixed-line telephone with video capability — PCCW created a new income stream. The telco committed itself to offer a new service every quarterly to take advantage of its quad-play capability which puts PCCW in unique position to extend the value chain of its content, digital commerce and advertising services.

The trend of subscribers expecting much more from their telcos is contributing to greater complexity in daily operations especially when the more sophisticated ones want the services — be it for communication, entertainment, information or E-commerce — to be personalized.

As telcos transform themselves and move to cope with the vast increase in subscribers while offering triple or quad-play, greater efficiency in daily operations will depend on automation of services which is carried out by the software in the network.

“My strong belief is that 21st century telecommunication is sophisticated,” Creaner said. “It’s all driven by software which is the essence of what we do at TM Forum. Our focus is to improve the industry’s ability to develop and deliver the management software that is at the heart of operation in every service provider.”

Touching on the global economy, he shared his view that the telecom industry is well positioned to survive the economic downturn far better than any other sectors. (see Service providers need to stay course in troubled time).

OSS players consolidate

Reflecting Creaner’s view, the software segment for Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) has been active recently where niche software companies become targets of acquisition. Through merger and acquisitions, the bigger software players are building up their capabilities to position themselves to offer comprehensive software that will satisfy increasingly complex demands in network operations as well as in the customer relations and personalization domain.

Japan’s NEC Corp. is a telecom vendor which saw the benefits to strengthen its OSS and BSS offerings through its acquisition of Netcracker last year. Netcracker is known for its software allowing telcos to rapidly deliver and manage content-rich offerings. Operating today as an independent software business of NEC, Netcracker is looking at leveraging its ties with the Japanese company to breakthrough the Asian market, according to its vice president, strategy, Sanjay Mewada.

In a recent development, China Telecom selected Amdocs, noted for its customer experience systems, to provide business support system for its subsidiaries, Tianjin Telecom and Jilin Telecom. China Telecom acquired the CDMA licence from China Unicom last year and Amdocs is implementing the migration of CDMA records.