Dang Tiepeng

BSS Solution

Carrier BSS systems have tended to be centralized since the second decade of the 21st century.

This centralization trend is reflected in the unified deployment and construction of multiple ubnets in a BSS system. For example, BSS systems are being constructed in a centralized mode in many provinces in China, and multinational carriers, including Huawei VIP customers, plan to construct subnets for multiple countries in one data center.

The advantages are as follows:

• TCO reduction: Operation and maintenance costs are reduced, and fewer maintenance personnel are required. This trend coincides with the roadmap of Internet vendors such as Amazon. That is, a unified deployment platform gives full play to the scale effect.
• Faster TTM: A faster TTM is the fundamental basis for a BSS to provide better user experience.
• Unified service framework: A unified platform enables corporations to use consistent business processes and release and implement corporate regulations. A unified platform also reduces the number of suppliers and further reduces management costs.

A BSS system constructed in a centralized mode in a corporation is called a Shared BSS, which is a private cloud constructed in on-promise mode.

The biggest challenge to a Shared BSS is the contradiction between the differentiation in services among subnets and the limitation brought by the only deployment platform.

Typical differentiation is classified into the following types:

• Integrated third-party systems
• Existing tariff packages and marketing strategies
• Managed original business process
• Laws and regulations
• Time zone

The preceding differentiation indicates that each tenant on a platform has different business processes and instantiated data. Existing diversified services need to be inherited without affecting user experience and use habits, which is the biggest technical challenge to the transformation to a Shared BSS.

Huawei BES, integrating digital transformation and SaaS design technology, is a centralized Shared BSS solution.

Based on the experience in China Mobile's centralized pilot projects, China Unicom projects, and MVNE projects at Europe Magnum, Huawei has established a Shared BSS as the architecture of the future.

The preceding figure shows that the BSS system constructed by Huawei in Guangdong has 120 million subscribers. The core network is distributed among six regional centers, but the BSS is deployed in two data centers, which provide an active-active GDR solution.

After the Guangdong project, Huawei has improved the localization function between tenants in the solution. After a BES is released, Huawei Shared BSS solution implements key technical breakthroughs. To be specific, it allows differentiated customization on each subnet, in addition to providing corporation-level powerful baseline OOTB functions.

• The same business process can be implemented in different methods for different tenants. GUIs and data models can be customized for different tenants and subnets.
• Master data management and data routing are used for third-party system integration.
• Instantiated data including product tariffs and marketing activities can be isolated.
• Different currencies and time zones can be configured.

Huawei BSS solution provides built-in business processes authenticated by the eTOM. In addition, a professional telecom business architect team in Europe provides consulting and BPR services on customer service transformation.

The most prominent feature of Huawei Shared BSS is that the superior customization and integration efficiency is not affected. Huawei considers TTM as the key to carrier operation efficiency and core competitiveness. The following functions are supported:

• New tariffs can be configured.
• Operators can create new functions or modify existing business functions and processes without performing any coding.
• Operators can orchestrate new business processes.

The preceding functions shorten the TTM of versions that require coding and customization from 30–90 to 10–15 days.

A BES with more advanced technologies reduces coding and customization requirements by 76%. These requirements can be implemented just through configuration and online IDE, reducing the cooperation between different roles and related paperwork. That is, the BES significantly shortens the TTM.

Traditionally, carriers need to consider customization requirements every year and spend a large amount of money, sometimes up to 10 million dollars every year, for these change requests. With a Shared BSS, Huawei provides a new business model for carriers.

The open Shared BSS solution supports customization of the third-party DSV and fully supports solutions such as Omni Channel. A Shared BSS is the most powerful support for digital operations.