Cable 'Provisioning'
Being Redefined for
Automated Integration
by Ken Freed.
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Cable operators learning the business of providing and maintaining cable modem services.
 

Funny how a single word can create so many challenges.

Take the term "provisioning." Few words have greater importance for the cable industry today.

From the Latin, proviso for the act of providing, the word "provision" is associated with advance preparation of supplies, like provisions for an army. The telecommunications industry adopted the gerund "provisioning" to mean enabling communication among network elements, then the term was ported to the cable industry.

"An intriguing aspect of 'provisioning' is its multiple definitions," says BroadJump COO Kenny Van Zant. "In the cable space, we usually think of 'DOCSIS provisioning' as the technical ability to get a cable modem ready to exchange data between a computer and a network.

"To me," he says, "'provisioning' means ensuring you have done everything to both the physical network and its support systems to facilitate delivery of broadband services to a subscriber."

A comprehensive definition comes from Ray Bennett, VP product management for the Conexon provisioning products at Interactive Enterprise. He names four layers of cable provisioning:

(1) Activating and configuring the subscriber's device using the trivial file transfer protocol (TFTP) to download the service level parameters, such as a modem's speed range.

(2) Activating the cable modem termination system (CMTS) at the headend to dynamically assign an IP address to the DOCSIS device.

(3) Activating and configuring the back-end operations support system (OSS) and the business support system (BSS) for all aspects of account management and billing.

(4) Enabling other network elements to deliver the broadband services themselves, such as email servers.

"Provisioning does not stop at the modem," he says. "It also can include all backbone providers, third-party ISPs under Open Access, voice over IP services, and content distribution networks with mirror servers in your cable plant. 'Provisioning' now means ensuring total network integrity."

It's no surprise that Conexon products cover these activities, nor that each venture in the "provisioning" trade would define the term to match its business model. When you have a hammer, everything is a nail.

But there's more going on here than semantics, much more. At stake are the fortunes of empires.

 

DOCSIS Legacy

Begin with the DOCSIS standard developed through CableLabs, created so any compliant modem purchased anywhere in America would operate reliably anywhere else in America, regardless of the headend equipment manufacturer.

Ask Rouzbeh Yassini, the executive consultant to CableLabs and CEO of YazCorp, the broadband venture house that founded LANcity. "DOCSIS was created in 1996 based on working technology from LANcity, General Instrument [now Motorola], Broadcom, and 3COM. These vendors authored DOCSIS 1.0 in line with the existing network management protocols for provisioning dial-up modems and other network elements."

DOCSIS provisioning since then is outlined by Pak Siripunkaw, a member of the technical staff at AT&T Broadband who's a visiting engineer at CableLabs for the DOCSIS project. "DOCSIS 1.1 has been expanded for transparent back office automation," he says. "It features a flexible toolset that cable operators can use to securely provision and manage their data services as they wish."

"DOCSIS 1.1," he explains, "defines a standard application interface [API] for billing software during auto-provisioning, but it does not address back-end applications themselves. Cable operators pick and choose which billing applications best fit their business models, then provision the applications they prefer. The point here is that auto-provisioning is where we want to be."

"You should not have to talk to a customer service representative [CSR] to get a new service," says Emperitive president and CEO Abraham Gutman. "The best example of self-provisioning is a bank ATM, where the bank does not need to increase the number of tellers to significantly increase the number of transactions."

"If you still require subscribers to call you to activate service," Van Zant says, "even if you ship them a self-install kit, you're still only half-way there. You may be saving a truck roll, but you're not taking advantage of more efficient channels for selling your cable services, such as a kiosk in a CE store or a webpage on the Internet. That's why the trend is toward subscriber-initiated provisioning."

"A related trend," says Ragan Wilkinson, VP broadband business development for AP Engines, "is development being done to automatically provision the digital cable services that run on the set-top box, like VOD and other interactive services, and do so at the same time as taking orders for cable modem services."

 

Provisioning Coalitions

"Only end-to-end network management can achieve fully automated flow-through provisioning for all cable services," says Frank Lauria, VP strategic business development at CommTech, recently sold to ADC. "You must be sure all network elements can talk to each other, so service delivery is constantly monitored and managed. The QoS {quality of service] needs to be contractually obligated, too, so customers feel complete assurance about getting what they're paying for."

Lauria draws hope from the TeleManangment Forum, a non-profit organization of 361 members from 36 countries representing the spectrum of telecommunications ventures. Proposing a business case for an integrated operations support system (OSS). TM Forum in November 2000 released its first tangible fruits, the New Generation Operation Systems and Software (NGOSS).

NGOSS provides an aggregate view of the cost/benefit trade-offs of various provisioning options, and it offers a financial modeling tool that companies can use to build their own business case. The goal is having a reference implementations by Q2 2001 with NGOSS-based products in the marketplace by early 2002. 

Companies engaged in the NGOSS initiative include AT&T Broadband, British Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, Korea Telecom, Lucent, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Verizon, Telecordia, and UUNET.

Other TM Forum members includes Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Marconi, Motorola, Oracle, Siemens, Sprint, Sun, and Unisys. Associate members include 3COM, Ceon, CommTech, Convergys, Microsoft, Nextlink, Portal, Qwest, Samsung, Teledesic, and Toshiba.

The Yankee Group calculates the OSS applications and services market totaling about $32 billion in 2000, perhaps surpassing $38 billion in 2001, largely from fulfillment and provisioning.

Lauding CableLabs for progress on interoperability, Wilkinson now wants DOCSIS, OpenCable and PacketCable extended to cover the provisioning of billing applications. Toward this goal, he supports the Internet protocol detail record (IPDR) for billing IP traffic.

He says the IPDR.org initiative is specifying data exchange protocols between the network's OSS and BSS elements -- an open standards solution to automated provisioning of back-end systems. IPDR.org members include Agilent, Alcatel, AP Engines, Convergys, CSG Systems, DST Innovis, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Portal, and Sprint PCS.

IPDR.org in October released version 2.0 of its Network Data Management &endash; Usage (NDM-U) specification as a step toward fully automated billing communications. The "official working philosophy" of IPDR.org tells the story: "A preliminary solution now is better than a complete solution three years from now."

"Provisioning is not a subset of billing," Gutman says. "It's the other way around. It's not about how well you can bill the customer, but how well you can offer services. Without provisioning, you have nothing to bill your customers for."

 

Market Strategy

Eventually, says Ceon CEO Tim Fritzley, "vendors are going to standardize provisioning and turn it into a commodity. But right now vendors feel they have to differentiate themselves with proprietary solutions."

Wilkinson looks for a shake out in the provisioning industry over the next 12 months, influenced by economic conditions for the entire broadband sector. "It's going to be interesting to see which players survive after all the consolidations."

Cautions Van Zant, "We're seeing providers spending more energy on the technical problems of getting a modem onto the network than on the business problems of utilizing that technical solution to increase subscriber numbers. Cable providers need to focus more on their endgame and see the value of automation."

"We're talking about a true on-demand system," says Curt Champion, director of cable and broadband marketing at Convergys. "Giving people what they want, when they want it, will help cable compete. Self-provisioning is going to change how cable companies do business, and that may be the biggest change of all."
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Cable Provisioning Players

AP Engines (apengines.com) -- "AP InterLink" product suit for connecting operations support systems for billing. Specialize in auto-provisioning of voice, video and data services. BroadJump (broadjump.com) -- "Virtual Truck" for provisioning cable modem systems. Pilot deployments by Time Warner Cable in Austin, Houston, Los Angeles. Ceon (ceon.com) -- "Can-U-Serve" and "On" and "Net Express" flow-through service provisioning and application platform. Now being integrated into Siebel e-business systems. CommTech (comm.com) -- "FastFlow" order management and cable modem provisioning system. Rooted in the telephony OSS business. Focused on "plug-and-play" solutions. CommTech recently acquired by ADC.com Convergys (convergys.com) -- "ICONS" Integrated Communications Operation Management System to provision voice, video, and high-speed data. "Wizard" subscriber management and billing system integrates back-end OSS provisioning. Emperitive (emperative.com) -- "ProvEn" software promises fully automated, real time broadband provisioning, used by Road Runner. Recently opened broadband provisioning lab. Interactive Enterprise (interactive-enterprise.com) -- "Conexon" broadband operating system for auto-provisioning of cable modems and voice services. Relationship with Motorola. Portal (portal.com) -- "Infranet" infrastructure for broadband Internet services, features real-time new customer provisioning, account management and IP billing solutions.