Telus: Billing Systems Must Enable New Apps
Telecom service providers are seeing companies such as Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) steal their thunder -- and their profits -- and need to be better equipped for competition, Gedeon said. "The billing and OSS systems have to rally around," he said.
Telecom network operators also need to be more open to partnerships and innovation and let go of the notion that they have to deliver every part of a service or application themselves, the Telus CTO said.
The often-outspoken Gedeon didn't hold back on criticisms of some current and past efforts to add value in the telecom space, questioning whether anyone really knows what "cloud" services are and calling IP Multi-Media Subsystems "a waste of seven years" by a wireless industry that was trying to bring its voice service into the IP realm.
"So what is going to be the predominant application for broadband wireless?" he queried. "Data."
— Carol Wilson, Chief Editor, Events, Light Reading
I agree that telecom SPs have traditionally been too slow to act - one of Gedeon's points is that they know they need to get faster and they need help from companies like their billing system vendors to help them more quickly turn up services.
There is a definite push on the telco side to get faster and the vendors here at B/OSS are all talking about the way that can happen.
Of course, telcos have been singing that song for decades now, the difference this time around is that they have competition from Web services companies and others that are happy to relegate telcos to dumb pipe status, So instead of yet another industry initiative like IMS (and before tha AIN), individual telcos are getting smarter and hope to get faster.
The other thing they are realizing is that they do need to partner with more nimble and innovative players -- Gedeon mentioned that as well.