Insights from Operator Interviews

Abstract

The previous section analysed use of software to improve productivity from a general perspective and provided a quick statistical analysis of software usage to the performance of a CSP. Before conducting elaborated statistical analysis on CSP software usage, we need to gain some insight into operator business and understanding on how operators see the role of software in their business as well as how they acquire software.

Telecommunications operators run a software intensive business. Currently, there exist a variety of access networks which form the technological infrastructure for providing communications services. Each network technology may require specific software applications for running services on that network. As seen in the previous sections, the OSS/BSS software is composed of numerous applications each for a rather narrow area of functionality. Further, in the operator business, growth seems to come in the developed countries from services built on top of plain network connectivity. The CSPs provide access to the Internet and to diversifying mobile services (besides telephony, also data transfer, email and chat services, and as a growing area also media, including video and TV), as well as a growing number of other value added content services. PSTN telephony is commonly facing phase-out in the portfolio of CSP services. All this adds to the number of applications a CSP has to maintain in their application portfolios.