Take away that last mile "toll gate" and telecoms would be quickly commoditized by the Microsofts, Googles, RIMs, and Nokias.
But telecoms are spared that worry because no matter how virtual or "over-the-top" our world becomes, it still needs to obey the laws of physics. Sooner or later, communications needs access to physical things. Cable pairs, fiber, junction boxes, and line equipment all need to be assigned and connected to switches.
A strawberry-colored iPhone without radio network access is just a glittering chunk of metal and glass.
The Two Basic Types of Activation Platforms
If we've established that automating access networks is profitable, who should you hire to get the job done? If your network has more than one family of switches, you need to select a vendor of service activation software.But first, a word of warning: Your choices here are not easy because activation solutions come from many different domains. And being good in one domain doesn't make a solution good in another.
Still, the activation market can be broken down into two basic types: local/wireless and transport/IP.
Local and wireless activation is the last mile connectivity variety (and the one we'll talk about in this article). It is specific to actual customers. Its job is to modify the settings of network elements in access, transport, DSL and wireless networks. By contrast, transport/IP activation is all about big pipe circuits in the cloud.
The Challenge of Network Interfaces
The biggest obstacle to building a local/wireless activation capability is creating and testing the network interfaces to the great variety of network elements on the market. Vendors usually offer a limited capability for activation. If it doesn't contain an active catalog of network interfaces, you may end up with a high cost of ownership or the need to run activation software on the vendor's inventory system.
Telcordia, with its 25-year Bellcore heritage, shows how activation software has evolved over time. Traditionally, adapter development was very time-consuming and costly and required custom interfaces. However, last year Telcordia introduced a new service activation architecture that greatly simplifies the process. Rather than develop custom or monolithic adapters, Telcordia supplies optional "techpacks", a combination of data models and scripts that help Java developers write their own interfaces. This latest version of its Activator product is now proving itself at operators such as Telecom Croatia and Brazil's Oi. Oracle, too, has proved its ASAP product at dozens of customers, including AT&T, BT, China Telecom and Vodafone.
