What BSS vendors get wrong about running a telco: A live discussion

“At the end of the day, everyone still had a bespoke solution.”

Most BSS vendors design solutions for an idealized version of telecom operations. This week’s Zero-Touch Live guest spoke with us about his experience addressing messier, real world challenges.

On our latest episode, Karl Heinz Frankeser, founder and CEO of METAVSHN and CTO of Swiss ISP Ticinocom SA, chats with Geoff Hollingworth about why he and his team ultimately chose to build a BSS rather than buy one, and what that decision made possible for his family’s telco business.

📺 Watch the replay now below.

Building a BSS from scratch

In the face of Switzerland’s QR Bill standard, Ticinocom realized that its billing system was so deeply hard-coded that adapting it would have required reverse-engineering more than 100,000 lines of code in a single file. This prompted Karl to begin engaging traditional vendors, revealing a repeating pattern of polished demos, vague timelines and professional services quotes measured in thousands of euros per day with no clear endpoint.

Geoff and Karl dove into the decision to self-build a new BSS from scratch, what the journey required and key takeaways, including:

• Why the service abstraction layer came first. Karl's team spent close to a year defining a standard JSON specification for what a "service" is, covering fiber internet, VoIP, SIM cards, TV, VPN, IoT and more. Every other process in the stack was built around that container, making it possible to extend the system to a new service a weeks-long task rather than a custom integration project.
• Data migration was the hardest part. The old system lacked serialized hardware inventory and many other things taken for granted in modern stacks. Migrating that data cleanly required far more work than the architecture itself.
• Small teams with short decision cycles move differently. Ticinocom serves 40,000 subscribers across quadruple-play and additional services with just around a dozen people. Customer feedback reaches the management team quickly, process changes happen fast and there is no multi-layer escalation between a problem and the engineer who can fix it.
• Service connectors replace bespoke integrations. METAVSHN built a standard connector layer instead of scripting one-off activations for each new product, making it possible to integrate new partners in just two weeks. Operators with their own developers can build and deploy connectors themselves without purchasing professional services.

Karl's recommendation for any operator stuck in RFP cycles and budget reviews? Define one achievable first goal, start building toward it and don’t wait for a perfect plan that may never arrive.

👉 Watch the full conversation for the complete discussion on how service-centric BSS design changes what operators can offer and how fast they can deliver.