lication frameworks). Further, the variation of services and the approaches to the development of customer services are areas of strategic consideration within the CSPs. In Asia, no small operators were interviewed. The company size and numbers of subscribers there are generally larger than in Europe. It looks like the very large operators of China are also outsourcing all software development. Interest in software designs that resembles interest among the middle range European opera- tors can be found in Asia with the middle range operators. Furthermore, good quality customer care is with the middle category of Asian operators a competitive factor - this may be partly due to the difference in the cost of work force in Asia as compared to the high cost levels of Europe. The history of the companies in Taiwan is, due to the political environment in that part of the world, different from China, and the Taiwanese businesses show similarities to the Western private businesses. It looks like the commercial interest and the entrepreneurial strategy building with good customer care and development of attractive value added services is as prevalent in Taiwan as it is with the middle range European CSPs. Analyzing the Current Phase of the OSS/BSS Software Market Lauri Frank, Pasi Tyrväinen, and Eetu Luoma In this section, the evolution of the OSS/BSS software industry is described, and the current phase of the OSS/BSS software market is analyzed using quantitative data. The first analysis uses the viewpoint of the general industry lifecycle stage models. This is followed by an analysis from the viewpoint of the vertical software market evolution model. The last section analyses the mergers and acquisitions of the OSS/BSS market from the last few years. 1 Industry Structure Evolution A majority of CSP's who have traditionally themselves developed and maintained all the software needed to run their operations, recently have adjusted their business strategy to concentrate on their key competence area, communications. Thereby