EX and for the impact of ASON/MPLS on it, it is worth doing a detailed analysis dividing this activity into subactivities. Service offering: This is the process related to the preparation of the offering for the end customer in terms of service SLA and price. The sales department negotiates the terms and conditions of the offer with the customer, and does an inquiry as to whether the connection request can be handled by the standard mechanisms and infrastructure. For nonstandard connection inquiries, a separate project is triggered. Then the offer is sent to the customer. Service provisioning: This is the process related to the effective service setup after a contract has been subscribed with the end customer. After contract reg- istration, a service provisioning project starts involving various parts of the carrier organization. At the end of the project, after a final test of the service by the carrier test department, the final customer is enabled to use the new service. A detailed action graph for service delivery is reported in Ref. [29]. Service cease: This is the process related to the discontinuation of a service after the end of the contract with the end customer. Service move or change: Often moving or changing a connection is one of the most complex operations. It involves all three previous processes: contract update, new connection setup, and release of the previous connection. The customer's request for change is handled by the sales department as a service offer process, checking again for the availability of resources. The sales depart- ment then generates orders for the service provisioning and cease process that Convergent Network Management and Control Plane are implemented through coordination from the Project Management depart- ment. At the same time, the client is receiving updates on the new installation. Technologies automating some of the network operation allow the cost for ser- vice provisioning to be significantly reduced, because the signaling can be done via standardized interfaces (