Circus Circus 

By Tim McElligott

For all the talk about being part of the process for the NGN, and all the talk about OSS/BSS being an integral part of IMS by way of service delivery, and all the talk about how, this time, the back office wasn't going to be an afterthought, there sure wasn't much to back it up at NXTcomm last week...

Cityscapes and travelogues 

By Tim McElligott

I fell in love in France a few years ago. Just like I fell in love in Dallas and Atlanta and New Orleans, even Chicago...

Al Gore's short tail effect 

By Tim McElligott

A peephole closes 

By Tim McElligott

My best friend died last night. He was 84. His body, which had never been much use to him other than carrying him around and allowing him to procreate, finally let him down for good...

Izzy… you didn’t! 

By Tim McElligott

This principal of wanting to fit in by being able to talk about what everyone else is talking about came up a few times at VON this week. And I think it will have a direct effect on the longevity and business case of this current craze of Internet TV...

Mopping up 

By Tim McElligott

One of the more interesting comments I read in the all-around-interesting and well-researched report on OSS in the story below is this from author Patrick Kelly: "If [communications service providers] hope to have any success in the marketplace...

The home stretch 

By Dan O'Shea

At TeleManagement World next week, you will see first-hand how telcos are beginning to morph as they are pressured to take on new roles as providers of services ranging far beyond traditional voice and into multimedia content. And these roles begin with better, deeper network and service management--end-to-end...

Yea, though I walk... 

By Tim McElligott

This column is brought to you today in black type in deference to the funeral of an acronym. It was a hard death, but as Achilles might have said, it was a good death. And in the tradition of the Yanomami of Venezuela, we will no longer speak its name--save today. May BSS rest in peace...

The winds of change 

By Tim McElligott

The sweet fragrance of change swept across the land this week, and it was a beautiful site to behold. The change I refer to, or rather that Telephony's Ed Gubbins refers to in his article this week about Cisco...

The accent’s on quality 

By Tim McElligott

Isn't it interesting how the popularity of webcasts and podcasts has grown? People often point to generational preferences for how we consume our information these days, highlighting that kids don't read books and newspapers; they watch videos and surf the Web...

Put up or shut up 

By Tim McElligott

It hasn't been this quiet on the OSS front since… well, since there was an OSS front, which began in earnest somewhere in the early '90s as software-wielding entrepreneurs began sniffing the promise of the Telecom Act of '96...

A bigger wallet share 

By Carol Wilson

At the core of most debates over where and how much service providers should be investing in their networks is the question of whether consumers are willing to spend more of their discretionary income on new entertainment, information and convergence services. ...

Feeling insecure? 

By Dan O’Shea

By all accounts, the amount of money the corporate enterprises worldwide spend on network security continues to rise year after year. By most accounts, security threats, actual attacks...

A New Dimension 

By Tim McElligott

There is no such thing as a final frontier. Even if mankind lives to explore all we think there is to explore, we'll never be sure there isn't something smaller...

Network of abstractions 

Marc Smit

As network operators transition from voice-only to multi-application service providers, they will have to make more efficient use of network resources...

Thunder road 

By Tim McElligott

Sprint succeeded this week in turning everyone's focus to 4G. What happened to 3G? Aren't we all still waiting to experience its full benefit? Aren't there several billions of dollars of return-on-investment that operators are suppose to enjoy first?...

The omniscience of time 

By Tim McElligott

When pondering the intentions of Verizon Wireless and its vendor cohorts in the recently announced enhancement proposal to the IP multimedia subsystem standard known as Advanced IMS, or A-IMS, the only real answer is: time will tell...

As good as they get 

By Tim McElligott

As good as major hardware providers are likely to be at also providing operations support systems, we have seen that politics and proprietary stubbornness have been too big a hurdle for them to overcome...

The seventh house 

By Tim McElligott

Just when you thought the stars were aligned for OSS vendors to begin reaping the rewards of surviving the downturn by streamlining their businesses, along comes a report from Insight Research...

Sellution 

By Tim McElligott

Telution was one of those independent software companies born of the boon years between 1996 and 2000 (1998 to be exact) that one really wanted to see make it...

Rising above the cacophony 

By Tim McElligott

Coming to San Jose this week, hoping for a respite from what has been a mild, but long Midwest winter, I longed even more for the lazy contemplative days of summer where I could step out onto the veranda--or the slab of concrete outside my back door that serves as a veranda--and, well, contemplate...

Some of my best friends are IMS 

By Tim McElligott

Prior to the 3GSM World Congress, I checked out the brochure and was pleased to see that on the agenda there was but a single mention of IMS--and that was at the bottom of the page in the listing for a late-afternoon/final-day program called "All IP Networks and IMS"...

Men are from routers, women are from servers 

By Tim McElligott

The call for a customer-focused, service-centric approach to operations management grows louder every day. Changing the mindset of network troubleshooters so that it reflects the new focus on services rather than network elements won't be easy. But then again, not all minds are created equal...

Local on the 8s 

By Tim McElligott

The following headline appeared on Telephony's Web site last week: Independents diving into local content. That's great; they should--head first...

Securing the homeland 

By Tim McElligott

One year from now, we will know for sure whether HSNI 2006, held this week in Orlando, Fla., was the successful inaugural launch of a new, creative cross-industry conference, or whether all the good intentions about collaboration professed at the event were just platitudes spouted by people reluctant to say they are just too busy covering their own ass to get involved with ancillary projects...