FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 21, 2003

News Media Contact:
Paul Feldman
Feldman Communications, Inc.
(410) 571-8900
paul@feldmancommunications.com

DITTBERNER RELEASES GLOBAL MARKET OSS/BSS REPORT

Largest study of OSS/BSS vendors and service providers compiled-Proves to be a bright spot in service provider CAPEX

Bethesda, MD- - Dittberner Associates, an international management consultancy and premier market research firm has just completed a comprehensive study of over 170 OSS/BSS (Operations Support Systems/ Business Support Systems) vendors and their software offerings. The report, available now, surveys virtually every known supplier of software, hardware sub-system and integration services, constituting the specialized OSS/BSS industry. This software is used by every service provider for applications like billing, customer care, service assurance, network management and others.

While considered a backwater of the telecom industry in the past, OSS systems and functionality have taken on a crucial and growing role as service providers look for greater efficiencies, adding more value to existing services, as well as meeting real time user demands for innovative services. This has led to wholesale growth of carrier external spending attributable to OSS products and is one of the very few bright growth spots in the recently troubled carrier industry. Combined global revenues for all related OSS/BSS activities generated in excess of $44 billion, significantly larger than had been previously estimated.

"Attempting to be the low cost provider or competing on price in an over capacity environment is a margin killer and losing game", said Donald Dittberner, president of Dittberner Associates. "Instead, service providers must be able to provision service on the fly, add bandwidth, bill for content, insure revenue capture and audit and meet new demands for wireless Internet services. The next generation of OSS/BSS products and vendor support is crucial to service innovation and customer retention."

Market Size and Growth

Total OSS/BSS revenues from public network service providers to the vendors of OSS/BSS products and services globally passed $44 billion in 2002. This includes hardware sales, systems integration, consulting, outsourcing by OSS/BSS vendors and prepackaged software. OSS/BSS software revenues in the US and Canada exceeded $11 billion, including support and integration services. OSS/BSS software related revenues are growing at an annual rate of 1% currently but increasing to an average of some 5% over the next 6 years. The period of 2005-2008 is driven particularly by OSS/BSS for wireless and broadband services at a rate of 8%. Traditional wireline OSS/BSS revenues will be bypassed by these other two categories in the 2004 timeframe. Regionally, Asia-Pacific will be dominant with 46% of global market share by 2008. Interestingly, the current market is heavily fragmented with no single vendor of the 170 holding more than 5% share. The top 25 OSS/BSS vendors of prepackaged software including integration services constitute 78% of the total global market for prepackaged software and OSS-centric services. The remaining vendors compete for $2.8 billion, earmarking this industry for continued consolidation.

Methodology & Analysis

"By analyzing each of the 170 vendors’ detailed revenue breakout data, pricing, customer set and installed base, we have come up with a highly accurate picture of the industry from a macro-level", said Mr. Lilian Tau, Vice President of Consulting Operations. "Of great interest to our clients - both OSS vendors and carriers making vendor selection - is the dissagregation of this data which gives a detailed competitive view of suite feature-function, pricing, customer base and the overall fiscal health of the vendor. This is essential information for making crucial, vendor and software suite selection for carriers, as well as the product management function in the OSS/BSS vendor set."

The set of capabilities described in the report for Next-Gen OSS is also vital, as these systems will provide the engines of change, driving incremental service delivery and a return to marginal pricing. For example, one profiled vendor, Imagine Broadband in the UK, is delivering state-of-the-art billing and provisioning systems for pay-per-use video delivery, VoIP and other content such as downloadable game software and billed lottery tickets over a cable (MSO) infrastructure. Analysis and knowledge of its information via the detailed vendor profile is of use to the financial analyst community, product managers, CIOs at service providers, and others attempting to measure and keep pace with this fast growing sector in telecom.

The report is available now in hardcopy, electronic and web-based format. The latter is continually updated and subscriber accessed with a search engine that can generate custom analysis. Included in the report is four years of history comprising the installed base of customers by vendor, showing unit shipments by operator, country and region.

About Dittberner Associates, Inc.

Founded in 1966, Dittberner Associates, Inc. (Dittberner) is an international market research and consultancy with over 40 Telecom Service Providers, and in excess of 100 telecom suppliers as clients. Dittberner specializes in market and technology assessments. It publishes multi-client study reference guides in its practice area of OSS/BSS, NGN Networking, NGN Switching, Access Technologies, Wireless and Broadband technology market segments. For more information visit the company’s website at www.Dittberner.com

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