Internal politics stifling BSS standardisation

Cultural issues represent the greatest obstacle to the introduction of centralised BSS strategies for network operators according to data from the Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey 2013. Internal politics and conflicting business cultures between a group operator’s HQ and its individual opcos was given the highest rating of severity by 21.6 per cent of respondents and rated severe or very severe by more than half.

Operational risk, which ranked second overall among the list of challenges, had nowhere near as high a rating at the top end of the scale, with only 12.5 per cent of respondents giving it the highest level of severity.

More than two thirds of respondents said they believed international operators should look to standardise their BSS systems across footprints, while just over one third felt the same way about centralisation. Standardisation was felt to be achievable by 44.9 per cent of respondents compared to 33 per cent for centralisation.

Andy Tiller, vice president for Corporate Marketing at Chinese BSS vendor AsiaInfo-Linkage, said these figures chime with sentiments that operators have shared with him. “When we speak to the local opcos they are often very bullish; they say that they’re the experts and they need to maintain their independence from group,” he said. “This is understandable but it’s one of the reasons why benefits like cost savings are not being achieved.”

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