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The role of BSS on the journey to 5G

22 Sep 2020
The role of BSS on the journey to 5G

The role of BSS on the journey to 5G

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The rollout of commercial 5G services is well underway. This evolution is unlocking exciting new opportunities, but it also presents new challenges. To capture new revenue streams, service providers must transform existing business support systems (BSS) and develop a clear transformation roadmap. In a recent MIT Technology Review Insights report, The 5G operator: platforms, partnerships and a new era of cloud-driven agility, telecom executives shared their vision for 5G-enabled BSS, and how they are preparing for it. Here are some of the highlights. As 5G rollouts accelerate, an almost limitless number of use cases will emerge – allowing service providers to significantly expand the number of services they offer to both businesses and consumers. However, although 5G opens up new opportunities, it also presents new challenges for service providers. From sales and marketing to operations, IT, network management and billing, enormous changes must be anticipated. To support this transformation, 5G-evolved BSS will be key to success – helping service providers evolve from traditional network developers into service enablers for 5G and IoT, and ultimately to service creators.

What does 5G-enabled BSS look like, in a nutshell?

Being use-case driven, 5G requires that service providers are able to quickly define, deploy, and adapt new offerings to capture new business opportunities. All of this must be supported by 5G-enabled BSS.

From network developer to service creator

During the transition to 5G, service providers must plan for the strategic evolution of their value chain role. Mats Karlsson, Head of Business Support Systems at Ericsson, explains: “We foresee service providers playing three distinct roles in the 5G-enabled world which allow them to provide increasing value from 5G network infrastructure, from offering tailored connectivity solutions and digital 5G platforms to building their own processes and offers.” Role 1: The traditional network developer. Supported by 5G-enabled BSS which supports 5G standards and features, service providers act solely as mobile connectivity providers by offering solutions such as mobile internet and communication services. Role 2: The service enabler. The service provider extends its services by leveraging cloud, edge and IoT capabilities and shifts its focus to enterprise customers. At this stage, the service provider is an enabler for 5G and IoT and acts as a supplier of customized connectivity and platform services. Here, BSS must enable device management at IoT scale while supporting service exposure and new revenue models. Role 3: The service creator. Service providers begin collaborating with a broad ecosystem of suppliers to deliver new services all the way up to full IoT solutions. These IoT and edge partners can be customers and suppliers, or both at the same time.

The impact of IoT and zero-touch automation on BSS

The MIT Technology Review Insights report predicts that 38.6 billion devices will be IoT-enabled by 2025, and experts anticipate that helping enterprises develop and manage these IoT networks will become a crucial role for service providers. Unsurprisingly, zero-touch automation will be key to securing the service provider’s role in this value chain – allowing service providers to innovate effectively at scale and remove bottlenecks from the carrier-partner relationship. To become a strong innovation partner, leading operators such as Verizon are creating marketplaces where they can work with third parties to plug-and-play new services that can quickly be scaled up and down.

Shankar Arumugavelu, Chief Information Officer for Verizon US, believes BSS capabilities will be deployed in agile “building blocks”, with customers choosing to “plug-and-play” different components to create their own service platforms. This will require a few critical things in the BSS stack. “Number one would be the creation of a partnership marketplace to support zero-touch partnering capabilities,” Arumugavelu explains.

Cloud migration and 5G-enabled BSS

Moving network capabilities to the cloud is key for service providers looking to improve network performance and become an effective innovation partner. As Pedro Uria-Recio, Group Head of Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at Axiata explains:

“Having the network in the cloud is important because it facilitates machine learning and AI, such as forecasting peak utilization, predicting when congestion is going to happen, and eliminating coverage holes.”

Service providers need market-responsive BSS to be able to offer these agile, cloud-based technologies to a wide ecosystem of partners and create compelling new business opportunities. As a result, cloud technology is certainly at the top of the agenda for network operators in their preparation for 5G.

The demand for network slicing and its implications for BSS

Network slicing is widely considered to be an important enabler for monetizing 5G, as it allows service providers to deliver unique and efficient service customization and flexible on-demand service catalogs.

“A 5G network gives you many more currencies to play with and a wide range of opportunities for customization,” says Srinivasa (Srini) Kalapala, Vice President of Technology Strategy at Verizon. “That’s part of the anticipation: the network can do lot more, and not everybody needs that lot more,” he explains.

Kalapala sees network slicing as fundamental to meeting these expectations. To manage network slices effectively and at scale, he expects enterprise customers will self-manage the network allocation and capabilities through policies, dashboards, or other BSS services, while the carrier manages the overall experience across the network.

It takes an ecosystem

As outlined in the MIT report, service providers are focusing on establishing creative new partnerships which enable IoT and other new services. The telecom executives interviewed identified these partnerships as integral to success, particularly when it comes to delivering on enterprise opportunities. As a result, one of the primary roles of BSS will also be to manage these business relationships by keeping track of agreements, handling orders, generating reports, sending invoices, managing debt handling and so on. For more information about the evolving role of the service provider and the importance of BSS in realizing 5G opportunities download the full MIT Review Insights report. Want to continue the conversation with an Ericsson expert? Contact us for a discussion tailored to your unique needs. Related content Ericsson is a platinum sponsor of the Digital Transformation World Series. While we can’t meet physically, we’ve reimagined everything you know and love about Digital Transformation World and turned it into a six-week digital event. The Series will offer a varied and engaging content program that will enable our global membership to connect, learn and collaborate, supporting all time zones. Don't miss out on the festival of collaboration! Register today. Note: Communication service providers: you can claim your free pass here.