Operator Top Ten Requirements for the networks

Operation Requirements for next generation multi-technology networks are the key topic that brought 3GPP, NGMN and TM Forum together for a workshop held March 29-30 2010 in Bonn. The two-day workshop was attended by forty industry experts who worked on use cases and requirements in three parallel work streams and provided recommendations for next steps.

At the Bonn workshop, the 3GPP Telecom Management working group - SA5 - presented background data on the SA5 work program to date, much of which meets the needs of the NGMN Top Ten Requirements:

• Quality and Quantity of Alarms
• Automatic Software Management
• Energy Saving
• LTE Automatic Neighbour Relation (ANR) and Self Organizing Networks (SON) Operation
• Performance Management in Real-time
• Substitution of Monitoring Probes by Infrastructure Inherent Trace Functionality
• eNodeB Plug & Play Self-Commissioning
• OSS Standard Itf-N
• LTE Parameter Optimization
• Automatic Inventory

The workshop conclusions acknowledged that:

• Standards specified by SA5 over the last ten years provide a widely deployed, fully re-usable and expandable solution for management of Next Generation Networks,
• NGMN Top Ten Requirements are mostly satisfied already by 3GPP SA5 specifications, the missing functionalities will be addressed in 3GPP Release 10 (due December 2010),
• The ongoing 3GPP-TMF alignment program provides an excellent opportunity to address network management of Wireless-Wireline convergence based on the 3GPP IRP framework.

At the end of this workshop, the SA5 Chairman Christian Toche said:

"This workshop has identified important requirements and allowed TMF and 3GPP to compare their solutions that can satisfy Operators requirements, of whom many are already supported in 3GPP specifications. I am confident that, as long as the representation from each group is maintained at the right level, an alignment of the 3GPP and TM Forum specifications will result from this cooperation, satisfying the requirements for use in convergent network operational environment."

Christian Toche identified that the next step includes the need for the two ongoing Network Management harmonization projects with the TM Forum - On FM and resource modelling - to be completed.

Further progress on the alignment of 3GPP and TMF specifications will be made at the follow-up workshop on May 6-7, 2010 in Montreal

3GPP documents from Bonn workshop are available at: ftp://ftp.3gpp.org/tsg_sa/WG5_TM/Ad-hoc_meetings/2010-05-Top_10/Docs/S5w100004.zip