BCE: Legacy OSS/BSS Is Good for Building Reefs

AUSTIN -- Big Communications Event – While legacy OSS/BSS systems are nearly the bane of virtualization and software-defined networks, they can still serve a purpose, according to CenturyLink's James Feger.

During Wednesday's keynote panel at BCE, moderator Carol Wilson, editor-at-large of Light Reading, reminded Feger that three years ago at another conference he advocated throwing legacy OSS/BSS systems into the ocean.

"At the time you were expressing impatience with the rate of change, now three years down the road have you become more patient?" Wilson asked Feger.

"No. Someone asked me what I wanted to do with my old BSS/OSS stack. I said the idea is to shut it off, throw it into the ocean and turn it into a reef," Feger said. "I don't think there's more patience. If you walk around on the [BCE] show floor you're seeing a lot of focus around software support systems and you're seeing different architectures where it does allow you to start pulling services out of the legacy systems."

"It [OSS/BSS] may not be the topic of choice during conversations now, but I do believe there are solutions that are viable that are being built."

Axel Clauberg, Deutsche Telekom's vice president of aggregation, transport, IP and fixed access, also addressed legacy OSS/BSS being road blocks to new services and architectures during his keynote address on Tuesday. (See DT Exec: OSS/BSS a Big Problem for Operators.)

During the Wednesday panel, Feger also spoke about how CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) was going beyond the traditional "five nines" of reliability by offering its customers service level agreements that were "six nines." (See CenturyLink Targets 'Six Nines' Reliability.)

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation