ing VoIP services can develop a service delivery advantage over their circuit-switched competitors, however. With a cable modem in place, VoIP services can be activated and modified remotely and without need for a technician. In the circuit world, field technicians generally must be dispatched to connect or move loops. In a cable modem environment, providing voice access to the customer means updating policy servers that control access to VoIP and manage QoS, with the traffic traveling over the existing bandwidth pipe. Communication with the various network databases can be automated relatively easily, given the maturity of telephony order management and provisioning applications. With this much automation possible, the path to voice auto-provisioning perhaps even extended to the customer is clear. The real OSS challenge will come in managing and maintaining the added telephony infrastructure, which OSS packages are also designed to handle. Though not entirely relevant to an OSS discussion, one telephony challenge any VoIP provider faces is the ability to emulate and deliver the broad range of intelligent network services the PSTN can offer. Key services such as caller ID and conferencing calling already are supported by VoIP equipment. The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS Infrastructure Services VS. Virtual Services DSL and cable provide us with examples of what might be called infrastructure services. Either provides fundamental pieces of our customer's services, providing not only the physical access link to the Internet, but a high capacity line to use for multiple services. Once the infrastructure piece is in place, our ISP can focus on selling other services over it, such as voice or ASP services. We are still at a stage, however, where there's a heavy focus on building and installing more access bandwidth. As more and more access bandwidth is deployed, the focus should shift more to developing more Internet-based services that use that bandwidth. One of the benefits of Internet-based servi