ge their bets, building network capability incrementally, but not investing in the OSS to back it up until services take off, they could fall into major service delivery problems down the road. That, above all, could put interactive service acceptance in jeopardy. If interactive services are not close to flawless, people will not want to pay premiums for them. The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS FURTHER EBUSINESS REQUIREMENTS Assuming interactive services do succeed, and the necessary billing and settlement mechanisms are put in place, some further requirements arise. The OSS platform will need real-time access to financial information, debit systems, content and rights management databases, SLA managers and settlement networks. Real time interfaces and transactions will become more common, especially when customers trade commodities like bandwidth that have a finite window of use, or use the on-demand services eBusiness, the Internet and new network technologies enable. For example, as electronic cash becomes more prevalent, more services may depend on the IIC's ability to check an electronic cash account, managed by a bank or another third party, and claim debits against it in real time. Aside from the technologies needed to make this happen, there will be a number of processes to consider, such as how to reconcile multiple parties making claims on the same electronic cash when a customer has gone over his or her limit. Without the mechanisms in place to manage transactions, security, rights to specific content and quality of service, the services themselves will not be deliverable. These questions and requirements will be compounded with continuing questions IICs have about integrating the OSS platform with trading partner communities, exchanges and new service-aware network technologies. All of these elements are still developing, leaving some large questions which IICs must anticipate. One factor that could make this process somewhat easier is the intelligence being embedded in the network.