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Abstract
Telecommunication networks are characterised by vast geographical expanse and large number of features. Continuously evolving telecom technology and tremendous competition has necessitated very tight financial & inventory controls, maximisation of utilization of installed physical inventory and high quality of uninterrupted service to the customers. Telecom companies succeeding in meeting these challenges continue to grow, thereby further increasing these challenges. GIS based Telecom applications are ideally suited to meet all of these requirements. A GIS based Telecom Application is not only capable of supporting standard GIS functions, but because of its specially developed telecom data model and functionalities, also supports various telecom inventory and OSS related requirements. GIS Telecom Application enables the Telcos to model various OSP objects like manholes, trenches, ducts and cables of all types; termination boxes, panels and splices / connections as well as all kinds of equipment up to port level. These models instantiated on the map provide a geographical representation of the physical telecom inventory. Such geographical inventory is used to support several business functions in the Telco right from customer contact, service order, network planning and engineering, As Built data repository, service activation through to post sales customer service. The implementation of GIS covers identifying initial business requirement assessment, map data specifications, data creation & migration methodology. Except for migration, other activities are generally independent of the platform. Selection of GIS platform and Telecom Application, hardware & software is a major factor determining the ability to deliver the business functional requirements. This selection greatly influences all work processes in operations stage due to version management abilities of the selected platform. Creation of network inventory unlike base map data, is generally done only on the selected platform after base maps are in place. Modeling of various OSP & ISP items as well as version control during instantiation are most critical factors in creating network inventory and connectivity for use by network planning / engineering and customer facing systems. Besides out-of-the-box functionality of the Telco Application / GIS, properly thought out configuration & customisation enhances the actual use of this spatial data for Telco functioning from business development, engineering, operational & customer service angle. The benefits of such systems can be seen only when the Telecom GIS system becomes an integral part of the OSS / BSS solution and the organisational work processes are designed to include the GIS as a part of the integrated OSS / BSS solution. This requires an integrated approach in implementing such system. Based on the flow-through business processes, integration with relevant OSS & BSS presents opportunity for maximum value addition, thereby elevating the system from a mere geo-physical inventory system to a vital piece in an integrated Telco enterprise. This paper discusses experience gained in implementation of a telecom GIS fully integrated with the OSS / BSS for countrywide network of Reliance Infocom.