FTTH
and IPTV
With Any Legacy Billing
System
Introducing Triad
Fiber-To-The-Premise (FTTP) is a rapidly growing market segment due
to its tremendous bandwidth capabilities. As more and more telcos
and municipalities elect to deploy bandwidth-hungry advanced services (e.g.,
voice, IPTV, data, interactive services, etc) to residential and
commercial customers, many service providers are choosing to extend
their existing networks to a customer’s premise with fiber optics
rather than use the more traditional copper wiring (AKA twisted
pair) or coax cable. While many of the essential technology
decisions and processes by which FTTP is installed and deployed are
known and well documented, one aspect of the fiber deployment that
often goes overlooked until it’s too late is provisioning and
billing of the FTTP services. Triad, ETI’s next generation provisioning product, provides
just such a solution.
Automating Flow-Through Provisioning of FTTP Gateways
Logically situated between the order-entry & billing (OE&B) system
and the downstream FTTP technology, Triad is the ONLY commercially
available Operational Support System (OSS) that automates
flow-through provisioning of FTTP gateways (AKA Optical Network
Terminal, “ONT”) from an OE&B system. Without Triad, or a highly
customized ‘1-off’ solution, a service provider has no choice but to
capture a customer’s order for service in the OE&B system and then
re-key the data directly into one or more element management systems
(EMS) to actually ‘light up’ the fiber channel and ports on the
fiber gateway installed at the service location. Since the
skill-sets required to capture a service order are radically
different than those necessary to handle the technical demands of an
EMS (i.e., CSR vs. network technician), multiple people and
departments are involved in the service activation process. As
multiple case studies have proven, the more human interaction and
less automation, the more time consuming and error prone the
provisioning process becomes. Two immediate and tangible side
affects of provisioning delays and processing errors are: 1)
decreased customer satisfaction brought about by activation delays,
and 2) increased operational expenses (OpEx) as the result of
needing more staff to manage the manual processes. By fully
automating the provisioning process and eliminating multiple data
entry points Triad reduces OpEx, which significantly accelerates the
return on investment (ROI), and it reduces the likelihood of a
negative customer experience, which in turn decreases customer
churn.
Voice, Video, Data and Quality of Service
Triad is able to activate and control any port on the fiber ONT
(voice, video, or data). If the fiber technology allows, Triad
controls the activation of ports independently of one another such
that only the ports that need to be active to deliver the services
requested by a subscriber are enabled; this conserves bandwidth and
improves security. Moreover, Triad is fully capable of setting the
appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) on the voice and data ports
which also helps to conserve bandwidth and allows the provider to
offer differentiated services that can be priced accordingly.
Therefore, if a customer selects the ‘Gold Package’ which includes
two POTS lines, Internet at the highest data rate, and video, Triad
will automatically provision the right ports on the ONT with the
correct QoS.
Triad also provides interfaces that supplement the fiber activation
for voice and data services with interfaces to Public Switch
Telephone Network (PSTN) gateways like General Bandwidth’s G6 and
Broadband Remote Access Servers (B-RAS) from Juniper. As a result,
Triad is able to fully automate the provisioning of the voice and
data ports ensuring that the necessary bridges between the fiber
network and PSTN and Internet are established. |
