The paper argues that a radical shift in the market for communications services is emerging, driven by the mass availability of cheap bandwidth, computing and global mobility combined with the pervasive rise of Internet based data services. At the same time, the Operation Support Systems (OSS's*) that are essential in order to create business value from these technologies are lagging behind market need. The authors argue for a re-think of the humble management system into a complete software wrap-around of the network to deliver a value creation platform - as different from yesterday's OSS as the bakelite telephone is from today's tri-band mobile handsets. This software will be based on product standards, not paper ones and will require a major shift of gears from the position of today. This value creation platform will be built from advanced, component based software delivered through a very different market model to that of today. Much of this technology exists; we simply need critical mass behind a common approach. The discussion in this paper represents the personal views of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of any organisation.

This paper reviews the business reasons why telecommunications service providers and network operators are moving to standardise key aspects of the management of their networks and services, and how the international definition of the Telecommunications Management NetworkTMNfits within current business strategies. It discusses the potential benefits of TMN implementation as well as some pitfalls that must be addressed in order to gain its full potential, including the technical evolution of the TMN framework to take advantage of advances in distributed object-oriented computing. TMN had its beginnings prior to the commercial and regulatory upheaval that now rocks the telecommunications industry world-wide. The focus of investment-toward a lean, competitive positionrepresents a significant change from the days when TMN was first beginning to be defined. This shift in emphasis, from a network-centric view to one that recognises the value of fast, accurate customer response and operational efficiency, has heightened the need for a standard way of managing within companies and across company boundaries. TMN is the best model the industry has for achieving standardisation. But the TMN model, in order to really meet the needs of industry going forward, must be interpreted more broadly than it has been in standards. We do not argue that TMN is in any way wrong, indeed we applaud the progress made to date.