Monday 23 July 2007

The Intelligent Network Evolution

The Intelligent Network Evolution
Today, the main existing network of GSM Operator is Intelligent Network for prepaid service. They have distributed the Service Switching Point (SSP) to locate all the regions of country for serving GSM ‘s prepaid subscribers. By evolutionary extension of the service component's functionalities (and corresponding enhancement of the IN architecture) more advanced telecommunication services can be realized, while still supporting existing services. In this case, the existing IN shall integrate or inter connect with the new technology platform, new protocol and external rating engine for supported new services. And IN services are considered to include also mobility, broadband and multimedia applications. That is, the IN concept is considered to provide the necessary openness in order to enable the realization of future services. GSM operator look for these evolution trends.
GSM operator should consider the following documents to explicit the following evolution of IN and Network Infrastructures.

1 New Technology Platforms
-The views of existing IN / Internet integration taking into account the evolution of IN in terms of new technology impacts and new bearer network support.
-The emerging integration of IN and Internet, covering an overview of potential integration issues, such as Web-based IN Management, Web-initiated Telephony services and Web-IN, and the usage of IN principles for provision of value added services within Voice over IP networks. Furthermore this part shall provides a overview of related standards fora, such as ETSI TIPHON, IETF PINT, Parlay, JAIN, etc.
-Evolution of 2.5 G toward an all IP network.
-Applying IN technology to GPRS/UMTS for services innovation.
-Softswitch and other network elements for next generation network on mobile networks.

2 New protocols
-The impact of new object-oriented middleware technologies and new open service architectures on IN, such as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA).
-The impact of new service mediation technologies, such as SIP, Web services, OSA/Parlay, and JAIN.
-The impact of other Internet Protocol, such as H323, MGCP, H248, SIP, SIP-T.
-The other impacted protocols that vendors is aware.

3 External Rating Engine
-GSM operator is seeking for Convergent systems that provides flexible and real-time charging and payment support to generate revenue from new 2.5G and 3G services for voice and data. The external rating engine of Convergent systems shall set up all kinds of service plans where a service charge can be calculated based on GSM Operator promotion. And it shall creates a charge and sends an already rated transaction to the GSM Operator’ s billing system where it can be included on a bill that shows all services new and old, a customer uses.
-The Record file that is created by external rating engine shall be processed as the event occurs. Once the event is rated and charged, the flexible output interface automatically distributes rated events to other applications, such as a legacy billing and invoicing system or even external databases or data warehouse systems. This delivers real-time feedback and immediate integration with internal and external systems.
-Vendors should provide the documents of external rating engine system that support the above requirement and can support the following requirements:
-GSM Operator can optimize the pricing for each customer and service without affecting the existing front and back office operations.
-The external rating engine shall enables real-time charging by capturing the real-time events from the network infrastructure across various bearers such as voice, SMS, data, content, MMS, video streaming, etc.
-The external rating engine shall provide the charging for prepaid, postpaid, and online payment. The rating functionality shall supports all service usage of mobile, voice, data and enables GSM Operator to support a very flexible multiservice pricing policy for both the enterprise as well as the residential market by offering tariffs based on date, time, user profile, destination or origin, all with customizable accuracy. Additionally, end users will be able at any time-before and after the transaction- to know the detailed price of a service.

4 Service Interaction
According to almost networks, the IN infrastructure is composed of the SSP overlay network , the Prepaid SCP, and the RBT SCP. The IN
system is CAMEL. And every IN call is being routed to one of the IN-SSPs and then a trigger is sent to one of the SCPs. By evolutionary extension of the service component ' s functionalities (and corresponding enhancement of the IN architecture) more advanced telecommunication services can be realized, while still supporting existing services. We have seen that the technology for service interaction with the existing IN services. For example, the new VPN service can activate with GSM Operator ‘s prepaid subscribers by trigger the existing prepaid SCPs, and it can play the RBT by trigger the existing RBT SCPs for that. The VPN service may activate different resources based on parameters such as specific service, subscriber, type of call and others. As was already described, VPN is required to interact with various existing SCPs in the network using mainly IN triggering. In order to do that, vendors should state or submit the document to GSM Operator to explicit the solutions, which provides the service interaction. And vendors should state the document that show the triggering signaling flow between the new systems and existing GSM Operator ‘s IN for this convergence service and other enhanced service.

5 Service Provisioning and Management
For giving these services to our subscribers, the vendors shall indicate the information of proposed system that supported the web–base serviced provisioning. The requested web-base services provisioning are detailed as follows.
-The systems shall provide the GUI capabilities on web base or Java base to perform fault management, configuration management, performance management, security management, file management and backup management.
-An services platform shall support web-base monitoring, managing, controlling, etc.
-The systems shall provide web-based management for remote setup, configuration file download, firmware upgrade and maintenance.
-The systems shall provide mechanism to ensure that only authorized GSM Operator personnel are allowed to access and manipulate the service data.
-The systems shall provide reports of network usage, traffic data and call blockage reports and feature activation, etc. Customer can get the reports in real time via web-base services.
-The systems shall support password management of various authority levels, providing detailed logs of various operations: Authority level and password protection can be set of operations such as rate management, bill management query, traffic management, service data management, user data management, access management and statistic task management query. Each operation will be documented in detailed log.
-The systems shall enable subscribers to activate and manage services and features either via web – base services.
-The systems shall provide API for connecting to GSM Operator ‘s Mediation that GSM Operator can activate and manage services and features either via mediation.

6 Service Creation
For giving additional services (based on convergence service systems) to our subscribers, the demand is quick customization of the ordered services, and in the requirement of rapid availability of the modified or reconfigured services. Or GSM Operator would like to have the rapid new services that developed by the third party. The vendors shall propose the solutions and submit the documents to GSM Operator for explicit solutions by the following item.

7 Application Programming Interface (API)
-The system shall support open APIs such as INAP, Java SIP Servlet and JAIN/Parlay to create new services. The APIs shall provide access to underlying services, switching functions and other system resources for Telco, enterprises and third-party to create their own services.
-The vendors shall provide details of the processing capability of the proposed network solution and shall describe the relationship between the stated capacity and calls handled.
-The vendors shall provide information on the behaviour of the proposed network and its call processing capability under overload conditions.
-The vendors shall provide the structure and details of the proposed API. As a result, GSM Operator could able to develop and implement additional services in the future ourselves.
-The vendors shall provide list of the partners who provide 3rd party application-servers (based on the proposed convergence service systems). The vendors shall also provide the site reference(s) that use these partners’ product. The configuration for interworking the proposed convergence service system and 3rd party application-servers shall be provided in the proposal (including the signaling protocol and call-flow).
-The vendors shall provide as much as possible the necessary technical information itemized in RFI regarding to GSM Operator ’s requirements.

8 Service Creation Environment(SCE) or Software Development Kit(SDK)
-The vendors shall provide SCE or SDK for creation, modification, customization and provision of new services on the convergence service system. SCE or SDK, which is basically based on Feature Blocks, easy to use Java-based graphical environment minimizes service-creation time and Open to third-party service developers.
-The vendors shall provide the details of Feature Blocks development model for fast service creation.
-The vendors shall provide the details of each Feature Blocks for the creation of a wide range of services.
-The vendors shall provide the examples of detailed services that developed by these Feature Blocks.