From triple-play to double-play when the OSS/BSS transformation is just a buzz word

Keith Willetts' last blog published also by Telecommunications Online Magazine is a realistic and hopefully motivating analysis of why Service Providers should continue with their operational transformation projects based on IT and creatively think forward on new generation of services.

I'm not just the broken trumpet here, I have facts in hand if you wanted to hear my story.

I have recently tried to install triple-play service in a new condo. It took 3 weeks, 4 technicians trips to my place and almost 10 calls to the call center. And all that I got was double-play for a higher price than the triple-play package I initially ordered.

All the answers as to why this excruciating experience that raises my blood pressure each time when I see the company's add for triple-play on TV, all the answers sit in the inefficiency and obsolesce of the operational processes, the same since the initial value proposition of the company, the cable TV.

One call I had with the Service Provider was specifically about this inefficiency in hope that somebody will hear me. This is when I found out out for example that the culprit is "the system"!
"The system" can not:
-track work orders unless there is one truck with one technician sent per apartment even though the intervention is on the same type and must happen at the same place!
- activate a new phone number in less than 4 days
- indicate that the signal is too low and the cable infrastructure is too old to install high speed Internet or triple play in some areas

Changing "the system" is what this OSS/BSS transformation is about. Redesigning obsolete workflows into agile business processes, rationalizing the myriad of management tools which confuse and separate organizations, putting location based services enabled PDAs in technicians hands and updating their skills to match those of datacenter technicians who beside driving a truck know how to draw cables, measure signals, plug them into boxes, have heard about IP and can even type a few encrypted commands to properly test the status of a computer or a program.

And if the skills part does not work, just surface all these service activation operations to a portal, the new generation of subscribers will know what to do with it.