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SID gives you the nouns. The telecom ontology gives your agents the meaning.

The telecom ontology for BSS and OSS

The telecom ontology for BSS and OSS turns the industry's shared vocabulary into meaning an agent can reason with, bound to your own records. Exosphere Agentic runs on Azure and integrates with the Microsoft AI platform, deployed into the customer's own tenant — so context, data and governance stay where they belong.

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SID: the industry's shared nouns

TM Forum's Information Framework, GB922 SID, is the telecom industry's shared information model and common vocabulary. It is independent of platform, language and protocol, and it is the foundation TM Forum's Open APIs are built on.

  • Eight public domains: Market and Sales, Customer, Product, Service, Resource, Business Partner, Enterprise and Common.
  • Each domain breaks down into Aggregate Business Entities (ABEs) and then business entities, modelled in UML.
  • SID answers what the business is made of. Its companion, GB921 eTOM, answers how the work gets done.

That shared vocabulary is where meaning starts. Exosphere Agentic builds on it rather than inventing its own.

What the ontology adds for agents

SID gives you shared nouns. An ontology gives an agent meaning. The telecom ontology in Exosphere Agentic is designed in four parts:

PartWhat it gives an agent
Entity typesSID ABEs as types an agent recognises: customer, billing account, product, service, resource
Typed relationshipsDirectional links with meaning, such as a product realised by a customer-facing service
Instance graphYour actual customers, products and services, connected as a graph
BindingsThe link from each concept to the system of record or event stream that holds it

On top sit conformance rules and provenance. A bill, a billing account, an interaction and an agreement mean the same thing to every agent and every rule, and every answer cites where it came from. This is connected meaning, not document search.

From SID to agent-ready meaning

flowchart TB
    S1["GB922 SID<br/>UML information model"]
    S2["Open API schemas<br/>SID-aligned payloads"]
    subgraph M["EXOS METHOD"]
        S3["Resolve<br/>entity types and subtypes"]
        S4["Promote<br/>typed directional links"]
        S5["Bind<br/>systems of record and streams"]
        S6["Constrain<br/>conformance rules"]
        S7["Cite<br/>provenance per answer"]
    end
    S8["Agents act via MCP<br/>governed and audited"]
    S1 --> S2 --> S3 --> S4 --> S5 --> S6 --> S7 --> S8
    classDef exos stroke:#0077B6,stroke-width:2px
    classDef std stroke:#005F8A,stroke-width:1px
    class S1,S2 std
    class S3,S4,S5,S6,S7,S8 exos
The first two steps are TM Forum standards; resolve, promote, bind, constrain and cite are the Exos method.

Three layers of understanding

LayerWhat it holds
Industry foundationTM Forum SID, eTOM, ODA and the Open APIs
Your operating modelYour products, contracts, policies, processes, terminology and how your systems relate
Loop contextThe entities, rules, evidence, authority and permitted actions one loop needs

Industry standards provide the common language. Your context makes it operational. Each loop inherits telecom meaning, then applies your own operating model.

The reference library is how a loop cites the industry; the ontology is how it relates your products, contracts and policies to each other. Every answer cites its source, and nothing is invented.

SID domains, Open APIs and the ontology

flowchart LR
    subgraph SID["TM FORUM SID · SELECTED DOMAINS"]
        D1["Customer"]
        D2["Product"]
        D3["Service"]
        D4["Resource"]
        D5["Business Partner"]
        D6["Common"]
    end
    subgraph API["TM FORUM OPEN APIS"]
        A1["TMF629 Customer<br/>TMF622 Ordering<br/>TMF678 Bill"]
        A2["TMF620 Catalog<br/>TMF637 Inventory<br/>TMF635 Product Usage"]
        A3["TMF633 Catalog<br/>TMF638 Inventory<br/>TMF641 Ordering<br/>TMF656 Problem"]
        A4["TMF634 Catalog<br/>TMF639 Inventory<br/>TMF652 Ordering"]
        A5["TMF632 Party<br/>TMF651 Agreement<br/>TMF666 Account"]
        A6["TMF621 Ticket<br/>TMF724 Incident<br/>TMF662 Entity"]
    end
    ONT["TELECOM ONTOLOGY<br/>typed graph · rules · provenance"]
    AGT["Agents via MCP<br/>governed and audited"]
    D1 --> A1
    D2 --> A2
    D3 --> A3
    D4 --> A4
    D5 --> A5
    D6 --> A6
    A1 --> ONT
    A2 --> ONT
    A3 --> ONT
    A4 --> ONT
    A5 --> ONT
    A6 --> ONT
    ONT --> AGT
    classDef exos stroke:#0077B6,stroke-width:2px
    classDef std stroke:#005F8A,stroke-width:1px
    class ONT,AGT exos
    class D1,D2,D3,D4,D5,D6 std
Selected SID domains, the TM Forum Open APIs that expose them, and the ontology your agents reason over.

Building where the industry is heading

  • TM Forum already uses a formal ontology for intent. Intents expressed through TMF921 Intent Management are validated against TM Forum's Intent Ontology.
  • The AI-Native ODA roadmap prioritises BSS and OSS ontologies based on SID and eTOM.
  • A leading operator has built a knowledge-plane ontology on the TM Forum Information Framework, and operators are calling for a shared telco ontology.
  • Microsoft Fabric IQ defines entity types, properties, relationships and bindings so people, tools and agents share one language. Exos Systems brings the telecom meaning that works with it.

Exos Systems delivers the ontology as a bounded engagement: map one domain properly, cross the boundary from BSS into OSS, then make it a reusable reference asset. Read the entity-by-entity mapping and the entity chain across BSS and OSS.

See the ontology on your own estate

Ask for the ontology briefing, book a demo, or open the library.