Telus Puts Software on Par With Network Transformation

“The idea of IMS is great but it clouded the waters for a lot of people and caused them grief. But we had to be proactive and couldn’t afford to do nothing but wait,” Gedeon said. That’s where the network gateway and policy and control engines came into play with Telus’ service delivery strategy.

“You can’t decouple the service delivery without having the infrastructure to make sure it can be successful alone,” he said.

One of the problems Gedeon is finding with decoupling systems such as service delivery is the general problem with OSS overall. “The challenge is not in building the network or the technology. The bigger challenge is how to work with the right parameters. A lot of the APIs just aren’t there and it’s great this wonderful world of service delivery everyone talks about, but how do I bill for it without the APIs in place?” he said.

Still, the current service delivery framework beats the old days when the services you built were predicated on what your network equipment could do. So far, Telus has been able to cut its service development time down to three-to-four months. It used to take a year.

Location-based services, for example, have become one of the company’s biggest sellers. Yet even they could be improved with better solutions for identity and privacy. These will come in time, Gedeon said, and that’s the beauty of the new business model. “We have a lot of profitable small services that wouldn’t have been possible before.”

While Telus has built or helped build some of its next-generation technology, such as its network gateway and policy engine, it would prefer not to have to do so. “One of the most important lessons I have learned in life is that just because you could doesn’t mean you should,” Gedeon said. “My guys are smart, no doubt. They’re brainiacs; they could build whatever they want. But if we can find it out there, we try not to.”

Telus would rather work within the standards and contribute to their development rather than try to change them. “We aren’t big enough to change the standards,” he said. “Besides, we are firm believers that the more people that rally around an idea, the better for everyone, including Telus.”