CenturyLink consolidates more of its OSS with Amdocs

Tier 1 telco CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) on Wednesday named Amdocs as its Operation Support Systems (OSS) supplier to consolidate its back office systems.

Out of this deployment, the telco hopes to achieve three goals: improve the delivery time of new products, reduce costs, and shorten the order-to-cash cycle.

Bill Bradley, CIO for CenturyLink, said it "will leverage Amdocs' experience in delivering automated and scalable OSS solutions to quickly achieve a consolidated OSS platform."

Based on a single inventory repository, Amdocs said it can provide the telco with an automated platform to plan and manage next-gen consumer and business services, including Ethernet and VPN.

Given the competitive nature of the consolidating ILEC industry segment, the real driver here is about time to market. Amdocs claims it can "enable service fulfillment automation, streamlining CenturyLink's ordering process, while optimizing network and asset utilization."

The deployment with Amdocs comes at a time when CenturyLink has been continuing its integration process of its three largest acquisitions: Embarq, Qwest and Savvis.

While it is expanding its consumer product sets, particularly Fiber to the Node broadband and IPTV, it is seeing continual uptick in business services, something that a consolidated OSS will help it advance as it completes 2012 and into 2013.

In Q3, CenturyLink reported that enterprise market revenues rose 7.2 percent to $341 million year-over-year due to strong MPLS and Ethernet sales.

On the overall network and back office integration side, CenturyLink said in its Q3 2012 earnings report, the telco said it incurred pre-tax integration, severance and retention costs of $17 million ($10 million net after-tax) related to the Embarq, Qwest and Savvis acquisitions.

For more:
- see the release

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