ATIS CIO Council Announces OSS and BSS Requirements for IPTV

Initial Standards Work is Underway in ATIS Committees

July 24, 2006, Washington – The ATIS Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council has developed requirements that address the specific impacts to operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS) as service providers introduce IPTV services.

The IPTV requirements released by the Council have three main components: the need for an OSS/BSS high level architecture standard; a standard for the ordering framework and Application Program Interfaces (APIs) necessary to support end-user orders for IPTV; and a directive to study the various aspects of Content Partner Management transactional activities and their interactions with OSS/BSS. The requirements have been distributed to the ATIS Telecom Management and Operations Committee (TMOC), Ordering and Billing Forum (OBF), and IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF), with standards and supporting technical deliverables targeted for completion in early 2007.

The ATIS CIO Council identifies and discusses IT issues of common interest to the service provider industry; frames, coordinates, and advances solutions to these common IT issues; and provides perspective and direction to the development of industry standards, guidelines, and best practices.

Members of the ATIS CIO Council are CIOs of leading service providers on the ATIS Board of Directors. Currently, the Council consists of representatives from AT&T, BellSouth, D&E Communications, Level 3, Qwest, Sprint-Nextel, TDS Telecom, U.S. Cellular and Verizon. Fran Dramis, chief information, eCommerce and security officer for BellSouth, chairs the Council. Andy Geisse, CIO of AT&T, serves as vice chair.

“The ATIS CIO Council identified OSS and BSS issues for new IPTV services as one of the key challenges facing the IT departments of service providers,” said Susan Miller, president and CEO of ATIS. “The interactive nature of IPTV introduces new systems and function needs to traditional OSS/BSS models, from purchases through interactive advertising to content rating and parental control interfaces. The development of a common architecture that accounts for IPTV provisioning, rating, billing and back office support will improve efficiencies across the industry and provide the vendor community with a reference model common to multiple service providers.”

The ATIS Board of Directors recently expanded the CIO Council’s mission to address a broader range of IT issues common across service providers. In addition to IPTV, it is addressing IT information and data security as well as Sarbanes-Oxley compliance as priority issues and is expected to soon announce the completion of requirements documents, which will be utilized within ATIS’ standards committee structure to produce timely industry standards. The CIO Council, formed within ATIS in 2004, was most recently involved in an analysis of circuit diversity assurance in support of National Security/Emergency Preparedness communications for the financial industry.

About ATIS

ATIS is a technical planning and standards development organization that is committed to rapidly developing and promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and related information technologies industry worldwide using a pragmatic, flexible and open approach. Participants from more than 350 communications companies are active in ATIS’ 23 industry committees and Incubator Solutions Program. www.atis.org

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