A pragmatic path forward for mobile and fixed network operators
Tier 1 operators face a long-standing paradox: transform fast enough to stay competitive, but not so fast that mission-critical services are destabilised. With sprawling hybrid estates, complex B2B, B2B2X and wholesale operations, and constant margin pressure, the challenge is not just digital transformation – it’s precise, low-risk transformation across digital BSS / digital OSS tech stacks. As the industry shifts toward cloud BSS/OSS, AI-powered and API operations, composable architecture, and TM Forum-aligned standards, including the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and GSMA’s Open Gateway, operators now have the tools to modernise with surgical precision. They can selectively deploy modular, TMF-compliant BSS capabilities, for example, that optimise cost, streamline operations, and accelerate monetisation without disruptive full-stack replacement.
The objective is clear: simplify the digital backbone, increase telco operational efficiency, improve customer experience, and unlock monetisation across emerging service models – all with minimal risk.
Below are four strategic priorities defining Tier-1 telecom digital transformation in 2025 and beyond.
1. Monetise faster: agile, cloud-native innovation
Speed-to-market is now a baseline expectation. Yet many operators remain slowed by legacy catalogues, tightly coupled BSS stacks, and rigid OSS processes that impede product agility in telecom.
Modern operators are adopting catalog-driven architecture, agile/composable BSS, and cloud-native BSS/OSS components that liberate business teams from IT bottlenecks. With API-driven BSS, powered by TMF Open APIs, and no-code configuration tools, operators can launch convergent commerce, unified commerce, IoT, digital, B2B, and 5G services in days, not months.
In an environment where value comes from continuous experimentation, product agility becomes the engine of telecom monetisation – especially for emerging opportunities such as 5G monetisation, network slicing, edge services, and wholesale automation.
2. Address the architectural root causes
Operational inefficiency remains one of the costliest challenges in Tier-1 telecom. Order fallout, rework, manual processes, and data fragmentation often originate from siloed and ageing BSS/OSS architectures.
Leading operators are addressing the root causes by embracing:
- Zero-touch service orchestration and service activation
- Cloud-native systems that simplify change
- Order management modernisation and order orchestration
- Unified, AI-ready operational data layers
AI-powered BSS/OSS capabilities are enabling operators to predict failure points, reduce manual interventions, and strengthen end-to-end process consistency across fulfilment, assurance, and lifecycle management.
Operational efficiency is no longer a cost exercise; it is foundational to commercial performance, SLA reliability, and profitable scale.
While many operators recognise the need to modernise, the business case for acting sooner rather than later has never been clearer. Recent research from Accenture highlights the growing financial and competitive impact of accumulated technical debt across CSPs – an issue that disproportionately affects Tier-1 operators with decades of legacy systems behind them.
3.BSS/OSS modernisation: lift customer experience
Across consumer, enterprise, and wholesale segments, customer experience hinges on reliability and accuracy more than aesthetic design.
Misquotes, provisioning errors, incomplete activations, and billing discrepancies undermine trust – particularly as operators expand into enterprise cloud, edge, and 5G service models requiring precise SLAs.
Customer experience transformation starts with BSS/OSS modernisation and improvements in:
- CPQ for telecom
- Accurate ordering and delivery
- Predictable service activation and provisioning
- Data consistency across digital BSS/OSS domains
When the internal digital engine is accurate and predictable, customer experience naturally improves, regardless of channel.
4. Build a future-proof, ODA-aligned architecture
Full-stack replacement is no longer the default modernisation path – especially not for Tier-1 operators. Incremental, modular transformation aligned with TM Forum ODA allows operators to modernise their telecom architecture selectively and safely.
Cloud-native and microservices-based components run alongside legacy systems. API-driven telecom architecture simplifies integration without custom rewrites, and AI-ready data models allow operators to extract insights from historically siloed data.
Transformation becomes a capability – not a project – enabling continuous improvement in monetisation, efficiency, and customer experience.
A pragmatic path forward with Hansen
As operators evaluate how to tackle these challenges, many look toward partners who combine modern technology with a deep understanding of industry realities. Hansen is one of those partners.
Hansen’s architectural strategy is fully aligned with having more than 10 ODA Certifications, ensuring interoperability, composability, and openness across complex multivendor landscapes for its telco customers. Beyond alignment, Hansen has directly contributed to the development and validation of the ODA Component Certification, a key milestone in the Forum’s industry mission to achieve truly plug-and-play, composable IT and ecosystems. This reinforces our commitment to help drive industry standardisation, shaping the future of telecom architecture itself.
Hansen’s flexible suite of cloud, API-driven, and AI-enabled BSS/OSS solutions delivers a unified digital backbone across order orchestration, catalogue agility, monetisation, data unification, and customer lifecycle management. This composable, modular approach allows telcos to tailor their digital stacks with surgical precision, deploying only the components that add tangible value, streamline operations, and control cost, reducing transformation risk while accelerating commercial impact.
Operators gain:
- Faster revenue growth through agile, catalog-driven product innovation
- Lower cost-to-serve through automation and orchestration
- Reduced complexity via unified operational data
- More predictable experiences across consumer, B2B, and wholesale
- A future-proof digital backbone aligned to industry standards
Modernisation does not need to be an elevated risk, and monetisation does not need to be slow. Hansen enables operators to modernise with precision and monetise with speed – on their own terms.
Understanding the Industry Landscape: A FAQ
“Modernise with precision” describes a low-risk, targeted approach to BSS/OSS modernisation where operators upgrade only the parts of their digital stack that create the greatest impact. Instead of embarking on high-risk, multi-year full-stack replacements, Tier-1 telcos selectively introduce cloud-native BSS/OSS, API-driven telecom architecture, AI-ready data layers, and TMF-compliant BSS components.
This modular strategy reduces cost and disruption, allowing operators to strengthen areas such as product agility, order orchestration, customer experience, and operational efficiency while maintaining stability in core environments. It aligns directly with TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA), which encourages a composable, interoperable, future-proof approach to telco transformation.
Telecom monetisation increasingly depends on the ability to respond quickly to new commercial opportunities – from enterprise IoT solutions and digital services to 5G monetisation, wholesale partnerships, and B2B vertical offerings. In this environment, operators that can design, package, and activate new services in days rather than months gain a clear revenue advantage.
Legacy catalogues, rigid product hierarchies, and tightly coupled BSS architectures make rapid innovation difficult. Modern operators therefore prioritise catalog-driven architecture, agile/composable BSS, and cloud-native BSS capabilities to give business teams control over offer creation without relying on long IT delivery cycles. Faster launch cycles = faster monetisation.
The primary obstacles are deeply entrenched in legacy architecture: hard-coded product models, outdated catalogues, nonstandard integrations, and heavy IT dependencies. These constraints slow down even minor product changes, creating friction between commercial teams and IT.
Modern telcos are replacing these bottlenecks with TMF-compliant BSS, cloud-native catalogues, API-driven BSS integrated via TMF Open APIs, and low/no-code configuration tools. These solutions allow product owners to create and test offers independently, ensuring the Digital BSS backbone supports true agility.
Order fallout typically stems from fragmented systems, inconsistent data models, and brittle custom integrations across BSS/OSS chains. When orchestration spans numerous legacy systems, even small discrepancies can cause orders to fail.
Operators can dramatically reduce fallout rates by adopting zero-touch service orchestration, modern order management modernisation, end-to-end automation, and a unified data model across their Digital OSS and Digital BSS layers. Cloud-native telecom systems and order orchestration for telecom remove reliance on manual rework, minimise delays, and improve service accuracy – all essential to delivering predictable customer experiences.
For enterprise and wholesale customers, trust is built on precision. A single misquote, incorrect configuration, or missed activation can lead to delays, SLA breaches, revenue disputes, and strained relationships. These segments rely on highly controlled, predictable fulfilment processes – particularly as operators expand into 5G edge services, network slicing, managed security, and outcome-based contracts.
Improving accuracy requires strengthening the underlying architecture – through modern CPQ for telecom, clean data models, cloud-native BSS/OSS, and robust API-driven telecom architecture. When quoting, ordering, provisioning, and billing are accurate, customer satisfaction increases naturally.
Cloud-native platforms provide the scalability, flexibility, and deployment speed needed to support modern telecom services. AI introduces intelligence into operations, enabling predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and proactive assurance. APIs – especially TMF Open APIs – ensure new components integrate cleanly with legacy systems.
Together, AI-powered BSS/OSS, cloud-native architecture, and API-driven integration create a digital foundation that supports continuous innovation, reduces technical debt, and enables operators to deliver new services more efficiently. This trio is central to future-proofing the telco stack.
TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) is an industry-standard framework designed to help telcos simplify, modularise, and modernise their BSS/OSS environments. ODA promotes interoperability, composability, and openness so operators can integrate new capabilities without heavy customisation or vendor lock-in.
For Tier-1 operators, ODA serves as a blueprint for transitioning from monolithic legacy stacks to cloud-native, API-driven, modular BSS/OSS infrastructure. By adopting ODA-aligned solutions, operators speed up integration, lower deployment risk, and reduce long-term operational cost.
Hansen aligns its architecture directly to TM Forum’s ODA principles and has contributed to the development of one of TM Forum’s recognised industry standards. This reinforces a commitment not just to following best practices, but to shaping them.
Hansen’s portfolio of cloud-native, AI-powered, API-driven Digital BSS/OSS modules is built on TMF Open APIs and composable design principles. This ensures seamless interoperability in multivendor environments and helps operators modernise safely and incrementally.
Yes – and in fact, most Tier-1 operators now prefer incremental transformation. Full-stack replacement is high risk, slow, and expensive. By contrast, modular modernisation allows operators to introduce new BSS/OSS capabilities – catalogues, orchestration layers, charging engines, customer management, monetisation components – without destabilising the existing ecosystem.
This approach reduces risk, accelerates value, and aligns with ODA’s principles of composability and openness. Operators can modernise at their own pace while still maintaining service continuity.
Modular transformation focuses on improving specific parts of the architecture – such as product agility, order accuracy, unified data, or 5G monetisation – without changing everything at once. Each module is integrated, tested, and scaled independently, which reduces disruption and improves predictability.
It also allows operators to retire legacy systems gradually, reducing technical debt over time while still realising near-term efficiency and revenue gains. This is why agile/composable BSS is now the preferred model for Tier-1 telecom transformation.
A unified, AI-ready data model brings real-time visibility across commercial and operational processes, enabling faster decision-making and more reliable service execution. It also allows operators to detect issues earlier, automate root cause analysis, and reduce order fallout.
This consistent data foundation is essential for AI-powered BSS/OSS, predictive assurance, next-best-action recommendations, and advanced analytics. It ultimately improves operational efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience – three core pillars of modern telecom performance.
Most customer experience problems – delays, incorrect orders, billing errors, missed SLAs – originate from inefficiencies within the internal BSS/OSS engine. When operators modernise their Digital BSS/OSS processes, eliminate manual workarounds, and ensure accurate orchestration and service activation, the customer experience improves naturally.
This is particularly true for enterprise and wholesale customers, where CX is defined by precision, predictability, and contract performance. Improving CX requires improving the processes beneath it.
Hansen provides cloud-native, API-driven, TMF-compliant, AI-powered Digital BSS/OSS modules that integrate smoothly into hybrid and legacy environments. Operators can use them to strengthen catalog agility, automate order flows, unify data, enhance monetisation, or improve service reliability – without needing to replace their entire BSS/OSS stack.
This flexibility supports transformation at the operator’s own pace, aligned to business priorities, regulatory requirements, and commercial objectives.
A layered or hybrid approach allows operators to combine existing systems with cloud-native components, enabling transformation without disruption. Key benefits include:
- Faster time-to-market for new offers
- Improved order accuracy and reduced fallout
- Lower cost-to-serve through automation
- Stronger customer experience
- Gradual reduction of technical debt
- Alignment with ODA and modular architecture principles
This approach balances stability with innovation – ideal for Tier-1 operators.
Industry standards like TM Forum ODA and TMF Open APIs reduce integration complexity, promote interoperability, and give operators a trusted blueprint for modernisation. They ensure that new BSS/OSS components can plug into existing environments without custom engineering.
By reducing dependence on bespoke integrations and enabling modular deployment, standards significantly lower long-term cost and accelerate transformation across the business. They also future proof the architecture for new technologies, including AI, automation, and 5G service innovation.
