MANAGEMENT WORLD AMERICAS, ORLANDO and LOUISVILLE, COLORADO - November 10, 2010 – TM Forum and CableLabs® today announced they will collaborate to leverage proven TM Forum best practices, tools and standards for the cable industry. With the rapid proliferation of new cable services and the continued focus on improving the cable customers’ experience, the new collaboration will accelerate expansion and uptake of TM Forum’s proven Frameworx standard across the cable industry.
The missions of the two not-for-profit organizations are nicely aligned. TM Forum brings together more than 700 companies to collaboratively solve business and operational management issues through pragmatic best practices and standards, while CableLabs works to efficiently evolve cable networks, services, and operations.
Through TM Forum's Frameworx integrated business architecture standard, comprised of widely-adopted tools such as the Business Process (eTOM) and Information (SID) Frameworks, TM Forum and CableLabs will develop and promote best practices and standards or specifications to revolutionize the cable customer experience, reduce cost and speed up new service deployment by MSOs. CableLabs, known for successful development of specifications such as Data over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS®), has expanded its focus on Business and Operational Support Systems (B/OSS) through its Cable Information Services (CIS) Program.
As a kick off to the new collaborative relationship, Ralph Brown, CTO of CableLabs, will be a keynote speaker at TM Forum’s Management World Americas, currently being held in Orlando, FL. In addition, Dan Lavender, CableLabs’ Director of B/OSS will be leading a cable focused TM Forum Working Group. TM Forum currently has five cable-focused collaborative projects in progress that will be the first areas of focus for the working group.
According to Craig Bachman, Head of Cable Market Support Center, TM Forum, “This new wave of cooperation between CableLabs, TM Forum as well as MSO and cable vendor companies marks an important milestone in the transformation of cable operations, OSS/BSS, and business intelligence to support the next generation marketplace for complex services delivered by cable operators. Moving together as an industry will allow these improvements to be available faster and will reduce R&D costs for MSOs and vendors by sharing key components for business process automation and IT integration.”
“It’s all about speed and execution in this very important area of back office processes and I look forward to working with the TM Forum as we expand the application of these tools in the cable sector,” said Jenifer Cistola, Senior Vice President of CIS at CableLabs.
