Telstra wholesale system upgrade suffers setback

Telstra has revealed it is two months behind schedule on works for a service qualification system that will determine how fixed-line orders lodged by wholesale customers are fulfilled.

The carrier's executive director for regulatory affairs, Jane van Beelen, noted in a letter to the competition watchdog that the delay "has been caused by complexities associated with integration and delivery of the IT solution." (pdf)

The system will not be ready in March 2013 as planned, and has instead been scheduled for completion at the beginning of May.

CRN sister site iTnews reported in July 2012 that Telstra was expanding one of its current service qualification systems, MSQ, to act as "a single, integrated SQ system to interface with NBN Co systems".

The expanded MSQ system will essentially determine whether orders for fixed-line services lodged with Telstra — either through wholesale channels from ISPs or from Telstra's retail arm — qualify for a copper service or an NBN fibre connection.

Telstra noted in its latest correspondence on the system upgrade that it had completed "vendor engagement, vendor design and preliminary notification to wholesale customers" on time.

The notification promised customers they would receive IT specifications for the MSQ system on November 8, 2012. This has not yet occurred.

It is now expected that customers will receive the specifications in January 2013, with "supporting training material and release notes" to be provided a month later.

The specifications are important because wholesale customers will have to make changes to their own systems to align with those made in MSQ.

"We will work diligently with wholesale customers from early next year to assist them in implementing the necessary changes to their own IT systems, and in assisting them in the successful deployment and migration to MSQ," van Beelen noted.

Wholesale customers can expect to be cut over to MSQ "from the second week in April 2013 to the end of April".

"This allows approximately three weeks for Wholesale customers to test and switch their IT systems to the new MSQ functionality," van Beelen said.