Loss market growth expected to outpace worldwide telecom growth

Responding to a highly competitive marketplace, telecommunications service providers will increase their spending for the deployment, enhancement, or replacement of operational support systems (osss) during the next five years. According to a report from Insight Research Corp. (Parsippany, NJ) entitled Operations Support Systems in the Intelligent Network 1997-2002, the importance of osss is increasing as competition forces telecommunications service providers to focus more on their customers. In fact, spending on osss that enable new telecommunications services for the customer will outpace the growth in revenue expected from these services, growing at a rate faster than projected worldwide telecommunications revenues.

osss consist of information technology (IT) infrastructures that enable providers to create, deploy, manage, and maintain network-based services. While traditional osss managed the network, new osss respond to, and in some cases, manage the customer. New technology will allow the flow-through of customer service requests without human intervention, much like the use of interactive voice response units. osss will enable use of the Internet as the access technology of choice for millions of connected subscribers and most businesses, says Insight.

Insight`s global forecast for the oss market includes expenditures on hardware, operating systems and middleware, application software, maintenance for hardware and software, and the revenues for professional services such as systems integration or process engineering. Insight predicts sales of $23.6 billion in 1997 will increase at an annual rate of almost 9.9% to nearly $37.8 billion in 2002. The importance of osss will increase with the creation of new and better service and delivery software while, at the same time, network hardware becomes more of a commodity.

While worldwide telecommunications revenues are expected to increase from $729.5 billion in 1997 to more than $1.1 trillion in 2002, oss revenues are projected by Insight to increase almost 13% faster during the same period. An important opportunity exists for both providers and vendors in the international marketplace, says Insight, where spending growth is expected to exceed that of North America in both Asia/Pacific and Latin America.

For more information, contact Insight Research Corp., Gatehall I, One Gatehall Drive, Parsippany, NJ 07054; tel: (973) 605-1400; e-mail: [email protected]. u