Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) signed an agreement with Telefonica to overhaul the international operator’s network management systems.
Telefonica operates in 25 countries, and this contract covers its top 15 properties, according to Chris Wade, managing director for Alcatel-Lucent’s OSS practice. Its current operational processes differ from country to country, relying on multiple software platforms. Alcatel-Lucent said it will combine Telefonica’s network management systems into a single, global software platform for operations monitoring and management, and the resolution of network problems. The company plans to standardize both software and procedures across Telefonica’s fixed and mobile networks, and integrate the new network management software platform with the rest of the operator’s network operations. Alcatel-Lucent will also maintain the new network management platform, while Telefonica retains control of its networks.
“It’s a significant push for us, and I think it represents where we are in the market,” said Wade.
Telefonica expects the revamped network management platform will allow it to streamline operations, improve quality of service and reduce costs. According to Wade, the top two advantages will be full operational flexibility across its major markets and better leverage of existing resources; and reducing the complexity and cost of rolling out new products and services across markets.
“The complexity it takes to roll out new services is quite high,” said Wade.
“We have great confidence in Alcatel-Lucent to integrate our best practices into a new, common service assurance platform that will help with streamlining our operations and ensuring service performance,” said Enrique Blanco, Telefonica’s global chief technology officer. He added that over the next few years, the increased consistency “will make us more agile and efficient in managing our networks to meet customers’ needs, to improve service quality and offer the highest availability with customer-focused, integrated processes.”
Alcatel-Lucent is beginning by collecting information from each market on their processes and situation, and differentiating between markets that need extensive changes and those where many of the existing systems can be integrated into a new network management system.
