Operation support systems (OSS) vendor Comarch touted its products in the launch of LG Uplus’ 5G network in South Korea.
Comarch’s Telco division offers pre-integrated solutions for service monitoring and management of network resources. Its portfolio of products covers things like resource inventory, service inventory and service fulfillment; integrated assurance and analytics; performance monitoring; and an OSS/BSS data analytics platform.
Comarch says its solution breaks down IT architecture silos and enables efficient fulfillment of 5G-based services, offering automated network management, support for network virtualization and new tools to create logical connectivity layers. Comarch counts Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, and Deutsche Telekom as European customers for its solutions.
“This OSS platform is truly pre-integrated and provides the means for the significant automation of our customers’ business processes,” Wojciech Dziunikowski, head of product management for integrated assurance and analytics at Comarch, told FierceWireless. “With our platform we are breaking silos, which hinder the automation promised by 5G.”
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Automation is emerging as an important tool in OSS/BSS as technologies like NFV and SDN have increased the operational complexity of networks. Machine learning systems are now being implemented to help network operators detect and respond to alarms and faults in real-time.
The TM Forum's Digital Transformation Tracker from October 2018 found that 60% of operators that responded to the survey ranked the need to implement new versions of agile OSS/BSS as a primary challenge in network transformations to support more virtualization.
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LG Uplus tapped Comarch to revamp its approach to network resources and service monitoring for its 5G network in South Korea last year. The deal included OSS fulfillment and assurance. That meant “the complete transformation” of LG Uplus’ legacy OSS environment, Dziunikowski said. Comarch replaced LG Uplus’ silo-based approach with “in-house network management systems specialized in network technologies for the end-to-end platform orchestration of business processes across different parts of the network,” he said. “This encompasses everything from the access network (fixed or mobile) up to virtualized core network platforms.”
Comarch’s Intelligent Assurance & Analytics, part of the solution delivered to LG Uplus, includes a dedicated artificial intelligence and machine learning module that gathers 5G network data that’s used in automating aspects of network management and service monitoring.
“We are able to gather the data required for automation from any data source available in a customer’s environment either legacy or virtualized. This includes modern protocols such as Yang and NETCONF, as well as legacy protocols,” Dziunikowski said.
LG Uplus plans to continue implementing Comarch’s solution in its mobile and fixed networks to further advance its 5G network, service and customer operations.