Building interoperability between fiber wholesalers and service providers
Project companies
Adoption of standardized, context-specific processes, APIs and data models can make it easier to achieve interoperability between CSPs. These tools can lower the cost of integration for multiple wholesalers and reduce the complexity for new market entrants by having a readily available service they can adopt.
While employing TM Forum standards, the project team intends to develop tools that are flexible enough to allow for innovation and differentiation. The goal is to achieve around 80-90% commonality so that companies can have a common set of integration and orchestration services for multiple partners, but still have scope for vendor customization.
Current challenges
* High integration costs due to different implementation of standards by companies
* Slow deployment and time-to-market for integrating with different access providers
* Different lifecycles and status updates make it hard to deliver a consistent customer experience
Goals
* Create a global standard for the wholesale broadband access market, based on latest TMF versions, but allow for local differences
* To lower integration costs and reduce complexity for working with different partners
* To help improve customer experience for both service providers and end users
Better for both access and service providers
* Reduce the “integration tax” cost of implementing the same product with different vendors
* Improvements to milestones and jeopardy history to create common processes between vendors
* Jeopardy clearly indicates who is required to take action and by when to help avoid delay
* Improvements to the Geographic Address Management API (TMF673 ) and Geographic Site Management API (TMF674) to help achieve better success for installation and repair visits
* Can be modified for local market regulation and requirements
What is the catalyst working on?
* Use the TMF v5 extensions to create context specific content but remain compliant to the standards
* A common product model and product catalogue for wholesale broadband, which still allows vendor specific features
* Contributed new API updates to geographic location APIs to better model sites and features
* Proposals to extend Trouble Ticket Management API (TMF621) to use milestone and jeopardy features from product order to allow better management of fault resolution
Want to know more?
* IG1351 whitepaper details the business problem and solution intent
* How the context specialization is used to create the product model
* Use case map showing the component flow and communications built for the catalyst
* Key challenges, considerations and regulatory constraints
* The whitepaper can be found on the catalyst resources tab
Also, there is also a masterclass session on Thursday 20th at 9:30 where a panel will discuss the work to create a wholesale broadband standard.
Resources
Documents
IG1351 Standardising Wholesale Broadband
Catalyst Booth Video
Catalyst in action
Catalyst booth slides
Wholesale Broadband Standard Masterclass Presentation
Inform feature
Simplifying wholesale broadband sales through standardization
Contact team
Email the members of the Catalyst team to request more details.