esses, such as business intelligence and billing settlement systems. APPLICATION SERVICES, INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND BILLING Traditional services, such as long distance and wireless voice, are becoming commodities. Similarly, backbone bandwidth is becoming abundant with the advent of excess fiber capacity and technologies such as dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and gigabit-capacity routers. An IIC's differentiation hinges on the value of the distinct features and applications it adds to commodity services. Applications are becoming key components of an IIC's overall service offering. Interestingly, as an IIC adds more application services, the base of operations starts to look more like a data center than a traditional central office. In response, vendors are beginning to add application configuration, monitoring and management to their OSS packages. Application services add another layer that the IIC must manage. The application's performance becomes as important as the network's reliability. The Chapter 9 - The Future of OSS IIC needs an OSS package that understands a service, from the physical network aspects to the contents of individual packets to the performance of an application as it is delivered. There is no longer a real separation between the network and the service - and even the customer. The OSS must hold a view of how each of these elements interacts from a service delivery and a service assurance point-of- view. The range of application services are multiplying and diverging from simple applications such as e-mail, to include streaming media delivered to the desktop or mobile device and to vertical applications targeted at specific industries, such as mobile workforce management for the construction industry. This will drive the need for new OSS functions, such as content and rights management, to determine which users have access to specific content, measure how many times certain content has been viewed and manage royalty distribution. 2.1 Interactive Television One major aspect of int