For the foreseeable future, network operators will need to manage several different types of network while presenting seamless services to the customer. The greatest challenge facing network operators is to relate network outages to individual services. At present it is really difficult to have sufficient context of problems that occur at the same time to be able to decide which is more important to fix first based its impact on the bottom line as opposed to its severity from a technological point of view.

Today’s Operational and Administration Management systems are often a roadblock to innovation, instead of a business tool for competitive success. The pace of change in the industry is such that incremental improvements won't work effectively. It is imperative that new ‘best-of-breed’ OSS components can be integrated quickly and cost-effectively with existing legacy to support rapidly changing business processes.

Suppliers have much to gain from taking the NGOSS approach to integration to enable their products to be used and reused in ways that are becoming more and more difficult for them to anticipate, particularly in short-term campaigns.

The business scenario demonstrated in phase III and documented in TMF843 presents a football match between Arsenal and Manchester United that is video-streamed to millions of mobile handsets by GPRS. A problem in the network causes the screen to go blank but the Customer Support Desk is not glowing red hot with irate fans, instead the network has sent an SMS to all those affected to let them know it is being fixed and to expect a substitute service imminently. The fallback GSM connectivity is a scarce resource, which can only be offered to high-value subscribers. So the network operator calculates who they are based on their history with the company and sets up an appropriate alternative for all customers. At the end of the session their billing records are adjusted accordingly.