OSS/BSS: Hotspot Blues

Finally, Indian telcos are looking at Wi-Fi in a wider perspective. In
January this year, BSNL announced the Wi-Fi service at the international airport
at Kolkata, as part of a larger, nationwide plan. More recently, the state-run
behemoth announced that it would be making the Pune airport a Wi-Fi hotspot in a
month's time.

In the south, Chennai Central became the first Wi-Fi-enabled railway station
in the country, with a Dishnet DSL initiative. The city was also the first to
have a Wi-Fi-enabled airport.

Looks like public Wi-Fi hotspots are going to become a phenomenon soon. And
if that happens, the rules of the game will change, with an additional layer of
network coming into play.

The impact of that change will be max on two OSS/BSS components-network
management, and billing.

For one, unlike the simple Wi-Fi at home that connects to the public
Internet, or even the enterprise-wide WLAN that connects to the Internet and the
organizational intranet, the public hotspot is a lot more complex.

A public Wi-Fi hotspot needs to seamlessly connect to multiple service
provider networks. These networks could be operating over different frequencies,
and worse, using different technologies (GSM, CDMA, EDGE, TDMA, etc.).

It's not going to be a easy, to say the least.

Yet, neither service providers nor network integrators, who could be
front-ending many of the public Wi-Fi hotspots (as a likely trend), seem to have
paid enough attention to the matter. They could be facing problems later, as the
OSS/BSS systems may not support the unique requirements of public hotspots.

The biggest challenge for a public Wi-Fi network is not integration with
other telecom networks, but the lack of an acceptable billing mechanism for its
usage.

So far, Wi-Fi access points have been set up at homes and offices, for
internal usage. Many a time, the service provider is not even in the picture as
far as the Wi-Fi infrastructure is concerned. And he's not bothered as long as
he gets paid for the bandwidth consumed or for the dial-up time.

The billing system in the above case is agnostic to the connectivity options
employed by the subscriber. That because the Wi-Fi venue is owned by a single
subscriber (home or office), who takes connectivity from a service provider,
independent of other service providers.

On the contrary, multiple subscribers will throng a public hotspot at any
given time, and they will come from different service provider networks.

The OSS/BSS piece at the hotspot should be able to authenticate, do service
provisioning, rate service usage, and post the bill for a user before he leaves,
all without disrupting the service or changing the respective user interface.

Now assuming that there are 'n' number of service providers, whose OSS/BSS
will be used at hotspot? Obviously, no ones. No service provider will like the
idea of billing his subscriber through some competitor's billing system, as
that will imply sharing of key subscriber data with the competition. There comes
the need for a separate OSS/BSS, dedicated to the hotspot, run by the Wi-Fi
network operator.

Having said that, that's not enough. Installing any OSS/BSS at the hotspot
isn't enough. It makes a lot more sense to look for a specialist system
designed for Wi-Fi networks.

Typically, a Wi-Fi network will not be expected to handle a million or so
subscribers at a time, but it will be required to service the few hundred or
thousand users really very efficiently.

Deployment of a specialist OSS/BSS system will also significantly improve the
user experience and introduce internationally accepted practices at hotspots in
India. This aspect is especially important for hotspots at airports and
five-star hotels, that are most frequented by business and international
travelers.

Some of the vendors offering specialized OSS/BSS for public Wi-Fi hotspots
globally are Pronto Networks, MetaSolv, and ElevenOS. Qpass, Portal Software,
Nortel Networks, and CSG Systems are also said to be ready with their Wi-Fi OSS
offerings for the Indian market. Of these, Pronto Networks has been actively
educating prospective customers in the country. The company earlier received
funding from Intel, which is actively pushing Wi-Fi initiatives worldwide.

Primitive charging mechanisms currently employed at several hotspots, help
only to discourage prolific Wi-Fi usage. Very often, even at large hotels, the
practice is to register the user for Wi-Fi usage and give him a card that could
cost as high as Rs 600 per day.

Deploying an OSS/BSS can change that by billing only for the bandwidth or
service usage, encouraging more users to utilize the network.

Deepak Kumar

A win-win for users and operators