n output data. Determination of who will be authorized to program and decide this. Charges distribution. The distribution of cost incurred in the development and adap- tation of each management system or a general integrated ssystem, if available. Interfaces and protocols. Interworking interfaces (how will the management gateways be?) and protocols for management planes cooperation. Telecom Management - Operations 3rd party Systems Service vendor application provider design Network Carrier Elements downtime: equipment operator vendor Final Service downtime: 4% Network Access equipment network End user vendor operator Figure 16.25 SLA management example. The SLA management includes maintaining the agreed values for each actor to keep the agreed value in the user interface. Among the users are banks, factories and selling units, which heavily depend on high quality communication O&M responsibilities. Who will be responsible for the support and development of the global manager (if any) and the individual operator managers and the O&M of the 'management interfaces' Fundamental Plans As mentioned in Chapter 15 the interconnected networks require a detailed planning to define the fundamental technical plans which should include the service plan. It is necessary to achieve a full alignment of the fundamental technical plan on the different interconnected parts, assuring a single behaviour along the whole network. Since the end-to-end path often passes several actors/operators, SLA management must be introduced. A single failure in a link in the chain can spoil the whole service as perceived by the user. See Figure 16.25. Different telecom management functions, particularly performance, fault and configu- ration management are associated to inter-operators SLA's monitoring and compliance. 16.13 CONCLUSIONS Telecom management is a key element for network handling and business development. Telecom management is first of all a network integrator (using this word in a wide meaning covering both layer integration and network