Ericsson flexes its OSS/BSS muscles

• The Swedish vendor is hosting its annual OSS/BSS Summit in London
• Ericsson’s operator customers are sharing their views on telecom software trends
• The vendor has announced new engagements with AT&T, Telstra and T-Mobile US

LONDON, UK – Ericsson OSS/BSS Summit 2025 – Ericsson announced three new major OSS and BSS deals with major telco customers to mark the opening of its 26th annual telecom software event, during which multiple network operators shared their views on trends and developments in the telecom software world. 

Gabriela Styf Sjöman, managing director of research and network strategy at BT Group, which is co-hosting the summit this year, stressed the key role that OSS and BSS tools do and, just as importantly, could play as telcos evolve into cloud-oriented digital service providers. 

“OSS and BSS can be more than just the software that manages the networks… it can be the engine for something even more exciting, to help reimagine the role of the network in the era of digital services,” she told the audience, which included executives from more than 40 network operators. 

Among those telcos were the trio that have struck new deals with Ericsson’s Business and Operations Support Systems unit, AT&T, Telstra and T-Mobile US. 

AT&T has teamed up with the Swedish vendor to launch its IoT Marketplace, which the partners describe as “an advanced digital eCommerce platform designed to facilitate service innovation and monetisation of IoT [internet of things] services at scale”. Making use of Ericsson’s digital catalogue, order management system and TM Forum API based-integration and exposure, the system, which runs on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure, “streamlines the processes of selling, contracting, provisioning, and billing within the Internet of Things (IoT) sector,” they added. 

Cameron Coursey, VP of connected solutions at AT&T, stated: “The AT&T IoT Marketplace differentiates our offerings and meets a wide range of customer and partner requirements. We are eager to collaborate with IoT ecosystem partners who share our vision of making IoT more accessible and driving growth, particularly among small and medium businesses. With Ericsson’s solution, we now possess the agility and scalability necessary to simplify IoT for our customers. The platform has enabled us to reduce the time to order fleet management services from hours to minutes.”

Telstra, meanwhile, is working with Ericsson on its migration towards autonomous network operations. Together they will “explore key component challenges to the adoption of autonomous networks, such as fragmented and siloed data, gaps between business intent and execution, the complexity created by multivendor and multidomain environments and the trustworthiness of AI models.”

As part of the engagement, the Australian telco and Ericsson will build “a knowledge plane – an information layer using data, AI and reasoning to monitor, analyse and control the network intelligently – that can act effectively as the foundation of autonomous networks.”

Mark Sanders, Telstra’s chief architect, said: “This collaboration between Telstra and Ericsson provides the momentum and focus the global telecom industry needs to advance towards intent-driven autonomy. Developing and validating ideas and technical possibilities in real environments is essential to closing the gap between aspiration and execution. Addressing the foundations will be critical to shaping the industry and influencing standards.”

And at T-Mobile US, Ericsson is helping the ‘Un-carrier’ to bring “intent-driven business support systems (BSS) to life, which will redefine how services are delivered, personalised and monetised for customers,” as 5G evolves and as the industry prepares for 6G. 

The vendor is supplying T-Mobile US with its Charging Evolved platform that, with its session-aware charging capabilities, enables services to be “monetised dynamically and transparently, based on context and quality of experience... with on-demand charging and seamless aggregation across business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and B2B-to-everything (B2B2X) segments, this platform has the potential to enable T-Mobile to unlock new revenue streams and business models that expand choice and flexibility for customers and partners alike,” noted Ericsson in this announcement. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV