Ericsson signs MoU to offer Interoperability Testing Services

Ericsson has announced signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the Operations Support System Interoperability Initiative (OSSii). With this initiative, Ericsson and other major Operations Support Systems (OSS) providers are aiming to take a lead on OSS interoperability, enabling the use of vendors’ OSS interfaces outside of those defined by standard organizations. To help operators simplify network operations and reduce costs, the companies have agreed to cross-license such OSS interfaces for multi-vendor network management.

By supporting multi-vendor interoperability between the OSS of all the participating companies, OSSii will promote competition for network-level OSS systems by reducing the overall integration costs as well as speeding up the time-to-market for new services.

Thomas Norén, Vice-President & Head of Product Area Radio, Ericsson, said, "As a leader in the OSS industry, we are pleased to be part of this initiative that is a practical approach to reducing the hurdles to OSS interoperability. OSSii shows the industry commitment to reducing OSS interoperability costs. It will stimulate innovation in network management, and cut cost for our customers, which is great."

By signing this MoU, each signatory will be liable to enter into a reciprocal cross-license agreement which will cover fault, performance, configuration and a basic set of network event-trace related northbound interfaces, to the Radio Access, Circuit Core and Packet Core OSS, that directly connects to telecom network equipment.

Apart from Ericsson, the other companies who have signed the MoU include Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks.