The platform is the same in every case. What changes is the parameter set, the standard build and which differences are worth an engineer's attention.
EPC and 5GC estates accumulate configuration from every rollout programme that has ever touched them. Typical findings in the first collection pass are software versions that have fallen behind the standard build, timers that no longer match across nodes of the same role, and small differences between geographically redundant pairs that should be identical.
Backbone and aggregation estates are where a role-based standard build pays back fastest, because the elements are numerous and genuinely meant to be identical.
The useful comparison in RAN is often not against a fixed standard but against the planning tool. Plumbline imports the planned parameter set and reconciles it with what the elements actually report, which surfaces the cells that were changed during optimisation and never written back.
IMS estates tend to be small in element count and high in consequence. Most of the value here is in change automation rather than drift volume, because the changes are infrequent and the rollback cost when one goes wrong is high.
Beyond the day to day, teams need to see where the configuration debt sits so they can plan work against it. Plumbline reports consistency by domain, by vendor and by element role, and tracks it over time, so a remediation programme has a number to move.