B/OSS Blends Competitive Content
06/16/2010
Taking advantage of this year’s location in Washington, D.C, the 2010 Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo presented content on the telecom industry’s competitive challenges from both technology and regulatory perspectives and from experts who toe the line on both. The result was an illuminating look at the intersection of policy and technology.
B/OSS also is known for blending content around emerging technologies with presentations and exhibits around the more immediate operational challenges faced by network operators today. This year was no exception. Sessions on Policy Control and Cloud Computing were on par with presentations on transpromotional billing, getting the most out of the USPS, electronic billing adoption and on-shoring customer care.
Attendees came away with a better understanding of the National Broadband Plan from associate chief Marcus Maher and got a better sense of how the plan is viewed through different lenses, namely the rural market represented by Caressa Bennet, managing principal at Bennet & Bennet, PLC and the Tier 1 provider represented by Brian Rice, executive director for Verizon’s Federal Government relations team. They also were enlightened to the plight of rural wireless operators. Rural Cellular Association CEO Steven K. Berry spoke of the need for more advocacy in the areas of mobile data roaming, handset exclusivity and interoperability.
When he wasn’t entertaining the crowd with his unique brand of Canadian humor, TELUS CTO Ibrahim Gedeon was highlighting the importance of the multi-vertical ecosystem to getting all the vast and valuable customer data into a system that allows operators to make the most of it.
He set the stage as the opening keynote speaker on a theme that would echo throughout the conference, which is a focus on the customer and applications awareness, both designed to gaining better visibility of user behavior and maintaining a role in the value chain as the world is ever more mobile and over-the-top.
Cloud Computing was dissected from several angles, including monetization, which was discussed in a panel led by Elisabeth Rainge, program director of network software at IDC called Monetizing the Cloud.
The spending forecasts for cloud are not yet as spectacular as the interest and hype around the technology. Rainge said it is a $17 billion market today and will grow to $45 billion over the next few years. While those are significant numbers, Rainge said it pales in comparison to the overall IT investment.
“It’s a drop in the bucket,” she said.
For the time being, a hybrid cloud environment will dominate as service providers and large enterprise such as IBM deploy both public and private clouds. However, when it comes to monetizing cloud services, a good deal of education needs to be done, particularly to non-telco providers whom Rainge said “don’t even know what rating is.”
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