nment is still near the horizon; however, there are some more immediate OSS issues to consider with cable. Open Access Cable operators, as they roll out cable modem services, are required to allow their broadband customers to choose from a range of ISPs. Building the infrastructure to support this mandate, referred to as "open access," is creating some serious OSS headaches. First, to support customer ISP choice, cable providers will have to build something conceptually similar to ILEC interconnection networks. This means providing ordering, provisioning, testing and trouble management capabilities to ISPs that the cable operators are still building for themselves. Open access also raises challenges around IP address management. Cable operators are stuck in a tight spot with IP addresses. ARIN, the international body responsible for IP address allocation, requires cable operators to assign 80 percent of their addresses before they can request more. The problem with this is twofold. Packet cable networks are similar to large Ethernets, where each network segment served by a CMTS is carved into multiple sub-nets that are designed based on current and predicted service penetration rates. Operators assign IP address pools to these sub-nets, and many of the IP addresses can be "stranded," meaning they have been assigned to the sub-net but not to users. Now operators must manage IP addresses for the ISPs too, allocating address pools they can access and use to assign to their customers. In order to manage limited address resources best, cable operators will need the ability to deploy addresses into the network element infrastructure and routing tables on the fly, adding to the real-time provisioning burden. Address management is often done manually today, which definitely will not scale in the open access world. 5.3 Device Conflicts Another issue arises with cable modem configuration. Different services require different configuration settings on the cable modem through which they are delivered. It's possible that the 