The announcement that OSS rivals NSN, Ericsson and Huawei have signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreement to cross-license their respective OSS interfaces to one another raised a few questions as well as a few eyebrows. That these players have decided to trust one another and adopt a simpler way of sharing proprietary interfaces is remarkable enough, but the timing of the announcement, coming as it did less than 24 hours before the opening of this year’s TeleManagement Forum’s flagship event was as surprising as it was, one suspects, deliberate.

Although there is widespread industry support for standardised and centralised BSS strategies for mobile operators, fears around operational disruption and cultural and political issues are so pronounced they are perhaps keeping operators from moving to implement such strategies. But a cloud implementation of a single BSS solution could represent a possible solution.

The report analyzes the BSS managed-services market, exploring applications-led services targeted at communications service providers (CSPs). The research has a particular focus on application development and management (ADM) and application operations (AO) trends and looks at a broad area encompassing billing, mediation, CRM, ordering, self service, revenue assurance, fraud management and partner management.

The mobile industry lost more than $58bn in 2011, due to inadequate operator billing systems, according to a report published this week. The figure, which represents over six per cent of operators’ global revenues, was attributable to inadequate fraud management and revenue assurance processes, according to Juniper Research. And it is a figure that currently looks set to grow.

It’s not often that you find an industry as diverse as telecoms singing from the same hymn sheet on anything, but this year’s TM Forum Management World event in Dublin was positively harmonious. And the message was that less is more.

Ericsson has announced its purchase of OSS/BSS giant Telcordia in a $1.15bn all cash deal. Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg said the deal reflected the growing importance of operations and business support systems in an environment where “more and more devices are connected, services become mobile and new business models for mobile broadband are introduced.”

I would be a (relatively) rich man if I had a dollar for every time someone mentioned ‘customer experience’ at the Managed Services for Growth Markets conference in Dubai. The number of terms and acronyms was dizzying – Quality of Experience (QoE), Service Quality Management (SQM), Customer Experience Management (CEM), Key Quality Indicators (KQIs) and the relationship of all these to network KPIs and contract SLAs figured a lot in discussions.

This white paper published by Comarch addresses how service providers’ existing BSS systems can slow down their business, the disadvantages of having multiple product catalogs and how Comarch approaches BSS transformation in terms of product catalog-centric architecture.

Comarch has introduced the new version of its Self Care product, with additional functionalities. Comarch Self Care is a web self-service portal enabling communication service providers to reduce customer service costs and increase customer satisfaction. It answers the needs of the consumer and SME markets, while the Corporate Self Care product provides advanced features for enterprises.