Telecommunication network management operations are performed based on accessing network management data (NMD) files via GUIs and general purpose computers including a network management system (NMS) server, and automatic routines for transferring binary NMD files between the general purpose computers and remote network elements (NEs) being managed. A system user produces configuration files at the NMS server for NEs using a network management GUI, and the hardware of NEs automatically complete the network management operations indicated by the NMD files transferred to them from the NMS server and produce their status files to the NMS server. The network management GUI displays network status based on the latest NE status files at the NMS server. This provides direct, binary file transfer based NMS communication that avoids the complexity and restrictions of intermediate messaging protocols or transaction languages and conversions thereof.