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| Challenges |
- Rapid growth in a new competitive environment
- Keeping network and fulfillment costs down
- Achieving a leading customer brand
- Providing accurate network data to support business processes
- Keeping the network model synchronized with the live network
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| Solution Characterstics |
- Flexibility to support future technologies and new services
- Inventory-centric-based approach crucial to successful processes
- Ensuring inventory data synchronized with the network;
SDH first then IP and xDSL
- Open and standards based
- Phased approach
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| Results |
- Cost-efficient and more profitable approach to the challenges of operating a complex, global network
- Deliver services accurately and on time
- Drive new technology and service innovations to market
- OPEX savings achieved for both Network and IT
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| FASTWEB’S CHALLENGES – DELIVERING NEW SERVICES TO CUSTOMERS QUICKLY, RELIABLY AND COMPETITIVELY
FASTWEB is Italy’s second-largest fixed telecommunications services provider with over 1,250,000 clients in more than 150 Italian cities. It offers broadband and triple play services to the residential market, a range of network and business services to the business market and complete network solutions to very large corporations.
FASTWEB’s success is based on a highly innovative approach. When it entered the market in 1999, DSL was in its infancy and although many operators were implementing Internet Protocol (IP) networks, few were converting these into customer-facing services. FASTWEB’s competitive breakthrough was to seize the opportunity to become the first company in the world to combine extensive use of IP as the basis of voice, data and video services across its fiber optic and xDSL networks. This enabled FASTWEB to achieve two very important business objectives: firstly to offer its customers practically unlimited bandwidth, and secondly to maximize the efficiency of its investments in infrastructure. In 2003, FASTWEB also became the first company to deliver TV over DSL.
From the outset, FASTWEB knew that while the main opportunity arose out of technical innovation, their primary business challenge was to ensure that they could achieve a reputation as the provider able to give customers the services they want quickly, reliably and at a highly competitive cost.
These qualities have now become synonymous with the FASTWEB brand and are crucial to its success in both the residential and business sectors.
FASTWEB recognizes that a single, universal and accurate view of the network is crucial to rapid, consistent network development and to the consequent delivery of triple play and business services.
THE SOLUTION – BASED ON AMDOCS OSS DIVISION’S INVENTORY AND DISCOVERY FASTWEB had four main goals for its OSS at the outset, which were that it should be:
- Inventory-centric – One system would support the end-to-end fulfillment and assurance processes.
- Universal – OSS should be flexible enough to handle emergent technologies and enable new services.
- Standards-based – The OSS would be built on an open, standards-based solution
- A Phased Approach – The solution would be divided in clear phases aligned with business requirements
These goals drove the requirement for an integrated inventory and network provisioning solution that could cover the required range of technologies which included SDH, IP and DSL. Following a rigorous selection process, FASTWEB chose Amdocs OSS Division to deliver its triple play and business solutions.
“Using Cramer OSS Suite we can design a service and then know that it will work because the data is accurate – in effect achieving a very high level of data quality has enabled us to achieve a service-ready network.
The solution was implemented in three phases by the local systems implementer – OneAns SPA. The first phase provided the universal inventory, the second added inventory-centric automation capabilities and the third provided discovery and reconciliation for the SDH transmission network. In time this third phase will be augmented to include IP and DSL reconciliation. RAPID INTRODUCTION OF NEW SERVICES
FASTWEB now uses Cramer OSS Suite to manage its complete IP and broadband network, including all associated transmission technologies. Additionally, FASTWEB uses Amdocs OSS Division reconciliation and synchronization functionality to increase network data accuracy. This has led to much more accurate design processes and a more efficient, service-ready network.
This creation of a service-ready network has allowed FASTWEB to achieve early market share and to reinforce their strong brand as an innovative market leader for new services by enabling a very rapid time to market.
FAST AND PREDICTABLE SERVICE FULFILLMENT
Accurate data quality has also contributed to another key benefit: being able to deliver services quickly and without fallout. An accurate view of circuits and their configuration means that services can be turned up quickly and predictably – right first time. Activation of the service is not a major challenge in itself but relies on accurate data to ensure that all the previous steps with dependencies on correct circuit data have been successfully executed. A service-ready network enables fast, reliable fulfillment and contributes to lower operational costs and an improved customer experience.
IMPROVING PROFITABILITY BY CONTROLLING COSTS
The main advantage of FASTWEB’s approach is most clearly seen in the effect it has had on costs and profitability. With the help of Amdocs OSS Division inventory and process automation, together with data integrity management, FASTWEB has achieved one of the highest average revenues per user (ARPU) in Europe at 733. Network and operations costs are tightly controlled and FASTWEB now delivers a highly competitive EBITDA margin of 29.7%.
FASTWEB HAS SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED OPERATIONAL MARGINS THROUGH BETTER DATA QUALITY
Its ability to maintain an accurate, centralized view of the network has also enabled it to control and minimize costs. For example, being able to reconcile the network has allowed FASTWEB to identify approximately 300 SDH devices with misaligned inventory data and to eliminate misalignment on circuits. This has led to huge benefits in terms of reducing CAPEX and together with the reduced fallout when fulfilling orders has also enabled major OPEX savings in both FASTWEB’s network and IT departments. This strongly reinforces the lesson that business processes that depend on inaccurate data will fail and will directly impact profitability.
“The reality is that network and inventory do drift apart unless tight processes are in place. Amdocs OSS Division’s automated reconciliation provides the level of data accuracy needed to control costs and deliver a highly competitive customer experience.”
FASTWEB is among a number of operators who have met their business goals for Triple Play and IP services using Cramer OSS Suite – reducing OPEX, maximizing use of CAPEX, achieving a rapid time to market for new services and improving the overall customer loyalty to the brand. FASTWEB’s success speaks for itself through its growing market share and profitability. It continues to set new goals and to build on that success using Cramer OSS Suite to provide the heart of its OSS.
“With the expanded capabilities of this new solution, FASTWEB can optimize its network planning and deployment processes, enabling us to maximize our return on network investments.”
ABOUT AMDOCS OSS DIVISION
Amdocs OSS Division was formed following the acquisition of Cramer, a leading provider of operations support systems (OSS). The resulting solution is unique in its combination of OSS and BSS, delivering complete visibility of the customer, the network and the service. This will help service providers transition from legacy to next-generation networks and systems, and rapidly launch new converged services that quickly turn network investment into service revenue.
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