WiMAX, like any new and unproven broadband access technology, has not yet been deeply integrated with the operational, service provisioning and network management systems that carriers have in place to support other long-standing services. It may be a few years and many more subscribers before WiMAX offerings become part of a more integrated approach, but that transition is already on the minds of the industry's operations support systems experts. In a recent e-mail exchange with Wireless Review, Andrew Chalmers, technical team manager at the TeleManagement Forum, described how WiMAX services currently are operated and managed and what needs to happen as the technology matures.

On the lack of integration thus far between emerging WiMAX offerings and existing OSS infrastructures:

In today's WiMAX networks, network management systems typically operate in independent silos from the existing OSS systems used to support wireline and wireless networks. This creates inefficient operation by preventing the service providers from being able to manage the customer experience in a consistent fashion across the WiMAX network and legacy systems. Today, this has not presented a significant issue because most WiMAX systems are managed as discrete hot spots with their own limited mobility, charging and per-session user fees. In the future, as we move to networks where subscribers can seamlessly access the cellular and/or WiMAX networks from a single device, depending on the service requested, service assurance systems will need visibility across the networks in order to ensure consistent billing, service provisioning and service quality. Also, today's wireless hot spots operate primarily as Internet access sites. When service providers begin to offer value-added services over these networks, such as streaming video and audio, they will need to be able to dynamically provision and bill for these services.

On the operational and network management challenges presented by WiMAX:

Service providers that plan to offer services delivered through converged cellular and broadband wireless networks will have a range of business models to consider, and consequently, each will have different requirements and value propositions.

This converged network model requires OSS systems deployed in the legacy cellular network to interact with OSS systems deployed on the broadband wireless network in order to support a range of different subscriber service levels based on the subscribers application needs.

This complexity raises new questions throughout OSS regarding fulfilment, assurance and billing.

On how the TM Forum is addressing these issues:

The Multi Technology Network Management [MTNM] work is perhaps one of the more important projects within the TM Forum. The TM Forum has a stated goal of facilitating an open OS environment. This goal has been realized to a great extent by the TM Forum eTOM [Enhanced Telecom Operations Map] and NGOSS [Next-Generation OSS] work. However, neither the eTOM nor NGOSS specifications cover technology-specific management issues, especially for physical resources, to any great degree. The MTNM specifications cover the management of the physical resources [e.g. network management system-element management system interfaces] that is an instance of a management system-to-management system relationship. The technology specific [in this case, WiMAX] to the MTNM work can be extended to cover the management system-to-management system interface.

One of the key objectives of this (the WiMAX) activity is to re-use and extend existing NGOSS work to allow information flow between management systems for WiMAX physical resources and management systems supporting other fixed and mobile access technologies.

The TM Forum's TeleManagement World Americas event will be held December 4-7 in Dallas, where Telephony will be reporting daily news on our Web site, www.telephonyonline.com. Watch our Web site and e-newsletters in the coming weeks for further pre-show coverage. Also, see Telephony's Nov. 6 issue for a special network management supplement produced in cooperation with the TM Forum.
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