Now that voice over IP has gone mainstream, the obvious and most visible means of competition are growing more aggressive. Price leads the charge with diminishing monthly rates and, in some cases, annual rates. Features such as area code selection and advantages such as unlimited calling are driven into the national consciousness almost as incessantly as that obnoxious yet unforgettable Vonage jingle, if you can call it that — Whoo hoo! Whoo hoo hoo!

But eventually these public battles give way to more private, behind-the-scenes operational battles, which can either support a company's aggressive pricing strategy through a lower cost structure or make such a strategy a loser by not supporting it with the proper cost structure.

So far, in the competition between cable providers and traditional telecom providers, the early advantage, supported by a lower cost structure for the provisioning of VoIP services, may be going to the cable providers.

Why? One word: DOCSIS. The data over cable service interface specification is a CableLabs-certified standard for cable modems. It has given cable providers, to this point, an advantage in maintaining a lower cost structure for provisioning and activating VoIP service by creating certifiable compliance to a standard application interface (API) and configuration method.

Although telecom service providers may soon even the score in configuring end-user devices, aka session initiation protocol (SIP) end points, through standards of their own, such as the DSL Forum's TR-069 standard, cable providers are leveraging their advantage while they have it.

Twenty-nine companies recently participated in the latest DSL Forum TR-069 Interoperability Plugfest at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory, where they tested 35 unique products. With worldwide DSL subscriptions passing the 150 million mark at the end of March (that's a 39% growth rate), and 22.2 million in the U.S. alone, the standard couldn't come too soon.

“If you narrow down on VoIP, provisioning services aren't very different than in a TDM environment,” said Rick Mallon, director of product management for Sigma Systems. “But the big advantage for the cable industry is that the DOCSIS standards gives you a well-defined API for the provisioning system to talk to. If you can provision one DOCSIS-compliant modem, you can configure them all.”

Mallon said that as a consequence, the cost of operations is a lot cheaper for a cable company because the variance and complexity in provisioning the SIP end points that telecom providers use, or will use, gives the cost advantage to the cable providers.

Sigma Systems is not touting a cable provisioning solution when it gives the advantage to that industry. Sigma also serves telecom wireline service providers as well as wireless operators and satellite providers.

So does MetaSolv Software. David Sharpley, executive vice president of marketing and product management, said that if there is any advantage to the cable providers in the area of provisioning VoIP services, it would be from not having legacy systems and data repositories with which to deal.

“There may be an added degree of complexity for existing operators, whereas cable companies started with a clean whiteboard,” Sharpley said. “So to the extent that provides an advantage, cable companies might be able to leverage that.”

Both vendors agree that there is only so much a software-based provisioning system can do to make the provisioning process seamless for a provider. They also both agree that the merits of a provisioning system — and therefore the competitiveness of a service provider — won't be measured by the ability to quickly and accurately provision a single service such as VoIP, but in doing so for a bundle of services.

“Provisioning systems create a competitive advantage when they can create new bundles instantaneously through configuration as opposed to customization,” Sharpley said. “That would be market-leading rather than being in a reactive mode.”

Sharpley points to an example in the prepaid wireless segment, where studies have shown that if a wireless operator can activate service within 15 seconds, the customer is likely to use the service more often right away and consume their minutes faster.

“If VoIP services were instantly available instead of after truck rolls and configuring through legacy systems, providers would wind up with greater customer satisfaction but also greater utilization of the VoIP service itself, just like the wireless example,” he said.

By taking it one service at a time, however, service providers still must close the gap on the cable providers when it comes to provisioning VoIP service. One of the ways they are doing so is with the broader adoption of TR-069, the DSL Forum's customer premises equipment (CPE) wide area network management protocol, which has become the standard for remote CPE management, just as DOCSIS has become for cable-based CPE.

TR-069 provides the framework for efficient, scalable and secure provisioning by acting as the protocol for communication between the premises-based equipment, such the DSL modem, router or VoIP analog telephone adapter, and an auto-configuration server.

The developing standard will support auto configuration and dynamic service activation, including initial CPE configuration and remote CPE configuration; firmware management, including version management and update management; and status and performance control through file analysis and dynamic messages, diagnostics, connectivity and service control, equipment status, firmware management and process control. In short, TR-069 makes DSL modems and the services that ride over them, like VoIP, more easily configurable, better managed and cheaper to provision.

In addition to taking advantage of the advancements in standardizing the provisioning and configuration of end points, vendors of provisioning solutions also are working on standardizing the interfaces to other back-office systems. Different standard APIs for automating the communication between inventory, activation, trouble-ticketing, provisioning and billing systems using OSS-J (OSS through Java Initiative) technology are being increasingly adopted, particularly by members of the ***TeleManagement Forum, which recently merged with the OSS-J group.

MetaSolv has been involved in the development of these APIs, and Sigma, temporarily distracted after its acquisition by Liberate in 2000, is rededicating itself to participation in the TMF and is again contributing to the development of OSS-J APIs, particularly the order management API.

“The acquisition could have gone better, but we have recovered nicely,” Mallon said. Two years later, Sigma Systems reacquired the interests of the company from Liberate and stood on its own again.

Another technology that will even the score with cable providers, Mallon said, is the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture. However, this could be a long time coming and might prove to be too little too late for bettering the provisioning process of singular VoIP services.

Mallon said that because IMS architectures use a subscriber-centric model, they break the logjam of silo-based systems. IMS is about getting services out quicker, he said. And because subscriber profiles are stored in the home subscriber servers (HSS), which other software and application servers dip into for more information, it is not necessary to provision individual elements, only the HSS.

“It ought to make the provisioning process much simpler. However, it's going to be a long process to transition to that architecture,” Mallon said.

Broad adoption of TR-069, the advancements of OSS-J APIs, the emergence of IMS architectures and the continued improvement of automated provisioning solutions will soon level the one-upmanship in the provisioning process between cable and telecom providers. However, increasingly sophisticated pure-play VoIP providers have methods and advantages of their own.

The leading pure-play VoIP provider Vonage, for example, thinks the provisioning process is one of its greatest weapons. Like the wireless providers in Sharpley's example, Vonage is looking for the instant turn up. Other than perhaps the shipping process, “Customer service provisioning is completely automated and hands-off,” said Louis Mamakos, chief technology officer for Vonage Holdings.

The Vonage approach is to have the device pre-provisioned off the shelf, which requires only a simple online activation once the user gets the device home. The company is not waiting for any TR-069 or other standard to evolve. According to Mamakos, “Device configuration is a solved problem.”

The challenges for Vonage lay in more external processes. “While industry standards [for device configuration] are helpful, they are not essential and extensible mechanisms,” Mamakos said. “Where some standards may be helpful is on other processes such as number portability.”

Today, there are no standard business-to-business interfaces in the wireline world to easily support integration with other providers and clearinghouses, Mamakos said. Therefore, local number portability tends to be a non-standards process for all parties involved.

Another way the process is simpler for Vonage and other non-facilities-based providers is that their services are deployed as an application over Internet connections the customer already has installed. “Therefore, outside plant issues are outside the service provisioning scope for non-facilities-based providers,” he said.

An additional provisioning sticking point for Vonage has been the turn-up of E911 services, but as of two weeks ago, the company announced that by continuing to work together with various public-safety answering points, more than 85% of Vonage's U.S. subscribers are now equipped with E911.

Because it's not seen, the VoIP provisioning process may not always get the attention it deserves from telecom service providers. Yes, the perceived advantage now enjoyed by competitors should theoretically disappear with better standards and IMS architectures, but for now, the ease of turning up service by competitors is stealing the babies from the baskets of the telcos' next generation of subscribers.

THE FOLLOWING COMPANIES PARTICIPATED IN THE LATEST DSL FORUM TR-069 INTER-OPERABILITY PLUGFEST:

• 2Wire Inc
• Fine Point Technologies
• Siemens
• Actiontec Electronics
• Infineon Technologies
• SupportSoft
• Alcatel
• Kenati Technologies
• Texas Instruments
• Allied Telesis
• Cisco — Linksys
• Thomson
• Alpha Network
• Motive
• Tilgin AB
• Alpha Telecom
• USA NETGEAR
• Trendchip Technologies
• Broadcom Corp.
• Netopia
• Ubicom
• Cisco Systems
• QA Café
• Westell
• Comtrend Corp.
• Cisco — Scientific-Atlanta
• ZyXEL Communications
• Conexant Systems
• Sercomm

Source: DSL Forum

COUNTRIES WITH MORE THAN 1 MILLION DSL SUBSCRIBERS MARCH 31

RANKING	COUNTRY	TOTAL DSL Q106
1	China	29,357,000
2	U.S.	22,224,006
3	Japan	14,571,000
4	Germany	11,100,000
5	France	10,214,000
6	U.K.	7,921,500
7	Italy	7,024,300
8	South Korea	6,422,406
9	Spain	4,294,800
10	Taiwan	3,762,000
11	Canada	3,479,265
12	Brazil	3,323,900
13	Netherlands	2,587,000
14	Australia	2,494,000
15	Turkey	1,843,852
16	Mexico	1,831,500
17	Poland	1,429,429
18	Sweden	1,382,500
19	Belgium	1,344,252
20	Switzerland	1,189,000
21	Finland	1,091,400
22	India	1,088,935
Source: Point Topic