Consequently, they've been rewarded with unprecedented growth. Recent events among the major cellular and PCS carriers offer a prime example. The recent introduction of nationwide one-rate plans hit the right needs buttons for hundreds of thousands of wireless customers. Yet many network engineering groups were still caught short providing sufficient network capacity to meet that demand. The carrier struggles to add switch capacity, re-home cell sites or provide backhaul relief.
Some likely culprits are manual network design, engineering and management.
What worked well in the entrepreneurial days of system turnup and early operation outgrew its usefulness. Tracking ongoing equipment additions and routings can lead to network clutter and confusion. No operational support system can guarantee adequate capacity is or will be available in situations of unprecedented demand, but the right configuration management system can identify potential trouble spots quickly and painlessly, allowing carriers to become proactive instead of reactive. Many of the major wireless carriers, as well as the CLEC community, have learned the importance of automated inventory configuration and engineering documentation systems. These systems provide a complete inventory of network equipment down to a card, port and time-slot level.