When service providers try to figure out what's in the slots and on the shelves throughout their networks, it's still somewhat of a guess," said Paul Doolan, vice president of engineering at OASys, a Cabletron Systems subsidiary. "Their inventory records, which are still kept up with 20-year-old, POTS-centric manual input systems, are usually only about 80% accurate.

Accurate inventory is necessary for customer service management, root cause alarm analysis, bandwidth management and other emerging trends, Doolan said. "As carriers come to depend on the use of each other's networks, a complete knowledge of these assets will become critical
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