CIO Council Addresses OSS/BSS Requirements for IPTV

CIOs from top service providers on Monday announced what they have determined as the top back-office requirements for IPTV success. Standards addressing these requirements and related technical support documents are then targeted for completion via ATIS early next year.

CIOs from AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp., D&E Communications, Level 3 Communications Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc., Sprint-Nextel Corp., TDS Telecom, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Communications Inc. have come together within ATIS, the technical planning and standards development organization. According to this CIO council, the IPTV requirements have three main components:

1) The need for an OSS/BSS, high-level architecture standard

2) The need for a standard to address the ordering framework and APIs necessary to support end-user orders for IPTV

3) The need to study the various aspects of content partner management, including transactional activities and content partner interactions with OSS/BSS.

The requirements have been distributed to the ATIS Telecom Management and Operations Committee, the Ordering and Billing Forum and the IPTV Interoperability Forum for input.

"The ATIS CIO Council identified OSS and BSS issues for new IPTV services as one of the key challenges facing the IT departments of service providers," said Susan Miller, president and CEO of ATIS. "The interactive nature of IPTV introduces new systems and function needs to traditional OSS/BSS models, from purchases through interactive advertising to content rating and parental control interfaces. The development of a common architecture that accounts for IPTV provisioning, rating, billing and back office support will improve efficiencies across the industry and provide the vendor community with a reference model common to multiple service providers."

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