Sample: “Making Changes Without Making Waves: Change Management a Key NightFire Benefit”

The task of staying on top of incumbent local exchange carriers’ (ILECs) interface changes can sound simple until you consider the numbers.

  • Each ILEC issues four or five major releases per interface every year.
  • DSL loop ordering requires use of up to three ILEC interfaces (loop ordering, loop qualification, and address validation).
  • There are eight major ILECs in the U.S.

Now multiply the eight ILECs times the four or five major releases every year times each ILEC’s three interfaces.

Keeping up with it is daunting, requiring up-to-date expertise and strong relationships with the ILECs. Each ILEC has its own change management process and its own particular way of making changes.

The need for change management grew out of the automated interfaces ILECs set up after passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. With automation came closely prescribed methods for transmitting orders—methods that continue to change in response to Federal Communications Commission requirements, new industry guidelines, and product evolution.

NightFire’s change management team takes each change in a series of steps:

  • Determine the effects of ILEC changes on the service provider interface (SPI) and on NightFire software.
  • Conduct testing during the “test window” set up by the ILEC, followed by tests on NightFire software.
  • Issue the completed service provider interface (SPI) to customers with on-site NightFire software. (ASP customers avoid this step.)

ILECs usually provide 30 to 90 days’ warning of changes. But the change management’s team’s progress is often complicated by numerous unplanned changes within the planning and testing period.

With NightFire’s change management team on the job, customers don’t have to worry about these complexities. We take care it for you.