Telcos all round the world were used to be dominated by the suppliers i.e the Network Equipment Providers. The landscape is changing now with dominant telcos (like Vodafone) demanding thier needs to be taken seriously.
One problem which will be of utmost priority would be the network management landscape. The situation is mired with interoperability, standardization and lack of uniform thinking. But now with standardization taken more seriously, forums such as TMF, 3GPP have active participation from service providers as well as Equipment manufacturers. One such example is the e-TOM (enhanced Telecom operations Map) which is defined to capture the processes in the service provider.
until now, OEM refused to integrate other OEMs. (e.g. a telco like BSNL can have a 2 vendor strategy - Ericcson and Siemens. And who will integrate both these Network Element to have a common network management strategy).
But now i think everybody realizes that you should have a multi-vendor approach. Why cant a OEM like Siemens spin off a NM company to handle the higher layers? (Let the OEM themselves handle only the Element Manager parts, but leave the rest to this spin off). This approach can have lots of advantages.
a) You are on a firm starting ground by automatically supporting home NEs.
b) Revenues are higher ( 1 Billion in EM vs 30 Billion in NM and above)
c) Multi-vendor approach is not contradictory as it was in the home company.
d) Other vendors can have a NDA if there is something propreitary.
What can be the flaws of such a model?