A recommended approach for electronic communications interface between local exchange carriers

This paper presents a method to develop a unified mechanized electronic communications interface (ECI) between operations support systems (OSSs) to perform operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning (OAM&P) functions. These functions support local phone services which are shared by local exchange carriers (LEC)s and incumbent local exchange carriers (ILEC)s. Due to the absence of such unified interface, today´s interfaces between LECs and ILECs are growing with increased complexity. Is this trend continues, it will lead to an operational nightmare, costly to maintain, and prohibitive to upgrade and upscale. The proposed approach was introduced to the ECIC industry standard body for approval under the name of EC-Lite