A common language

A largely invisible issue weighs heavily on the telecommunications industry's remarkable, almost daily transformation. The seamless interoperability that has enabled the new telecommunications environment to emerge cannot be taken for granted, particularly in a deregulated environment. It must be managed carefully, with a clear vision of the future.

Its history explains why. In the early 1900s, AT&T set out to provide universal telephone service to everyone in the United States. AT&T's president at that time, Theodore Vail, coined the phrase, "One policy, one system, universal service."

In those days, the issue was more intraoperability than interoperability, but many of the challenges were the same. As AT&T added customers, invented technologies and created services, it had to develop ways to manage its growing and complex network.

Even Alexander Graham Bell's first transcontinental call from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco in 1915 required integrating existing and new technologies, including wire as thick as a pencil, loading coils and repeaters using vacuum tubes.

In 1951, when direct long-distance dialing was introduced, advances in switching, telephone numbering and billing systems replaced an operator in connecting a long-distance call.

In the 1960s, the Bell System's experts realized the need for a consistent method of keeping track of all the network elements, including what services it provided and how those elements were interconnected. AT&T Bell Laboratories created coding schemes to identify the network components, including locations, facilities, circuits and equipment.

Over time, codes were defined to identify different services, such as touch-tone, call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID and their relevant attributes.

Now known as the Common Language suite of products, the codes help communications companies name, locate, inventory and manage all aspects of their networks. They identify items as large as a building, as small as a single board in a digital switching machine and as complex as a customer circuit provided over a T-1 transmission path or instructions for a customer's call forwarding.

Digital age upgrades codes Divestiture spawned a vast array of services. From fax transmissions to Internet commerce and from digital services to broadband networks, today's telecommunications networks are virtually unlimited in their uses.

In this exploding telecom environment, interoperability and the Common Language codes are more important than ever.

When AT&T spun off its local exchanges into seven regional holding companies, everything-from the actual telephone services and switching systems to provisioning and billing-still had to operate seamlessly so that customers would have no service disruption.

Bellcore facilitated the interoperability, including continuing to enhance the Common Language set of products.

The focus of the work broadened from serving former AT&T companies to promoting interoperability and network management for all companies in the industry. The result is a suite of products that can accommodate the multitude of new companies, technologies and services in the marketplace.

The system of codes continues to expand to accommodate both new technologies and new ways of doing business.

The growth has been astounding, as evidenced by the Common Language Location Identification (CLLI) code set, which identifies buildings that contain telephony equipment, network facilities housed in those buildings and non-building sites such as poles and manholes. The number has jumped from 1 million CLLI codes in 1990 to 2 million in 1996 to more than 2.7 million so far this year (Figure 1).

Telcos have identified these millions of locations housing telecom equipment and interconnections. Because of telecom reform, the number of locations is expanding nearly 20% annually.

The reason for this expansion is clear-the need for interoperability. The CLLI location codes play a key role by identifying the vast number of locations where telecom companies install network equipment and where they need to interconnect with each other to provide service (Figure 2).

Simply using common descriptions of network locations is not enough to achieve interoperability among carriers. CLLI location codes are engineered to provide exact names that people recognize. More than 300,000 types of equipment are identified at many of these locations.

Supporting these rules is a set of Common Language computing systems that authorized users around the world can access to obtain the latest codes and add location information.

Experts on the codes and their implementation by telecom carriers and manufacturers update the database to include the most current ones. These experts also suggest best ways to use the codes to achieve interoperability and to manage the telecommunications network effectively.

New methods and computing applications are being developed to facilitate use of the codes, especially by the large number of novices now employed in the growing telecom industry.

By using a consistent method to exchange detailed technical information, companies can realize increased operational efficiencies. For example, when ordering, provisioning or billing for services such as call waiting, the codes ensure that all information is presented in a clearly understood format so that customers receive-and are properly billed for-the services they request.

The Common Language codes also enable internal efficiencies such as flowthrough-starting with the customer service representative entering an order to ultimately billing the customer for the service. This flowthrough allows each of the operations systems to process the appropriate portion of the service order information without human intervention (Figure 3).

Telecom developments are emerging more rapidly than ever. What's next?

Vendors will produce hand-held communicators that enable digital conversations and include video, fax, e-mail and print capabilities.

The industry also will see the continued convergence and interactivity of computers, televisions, optical scanners and many other stand-alone electronic devices.

Worldwide number portability through satellites could add another dimension of complexity (or simplicity, depending on one's point of reference) to the telecom landscape.

Each new innovation, however, carries its own set of challenges. Interconnection agreements, seamless changeover of services from one provider to another, successful mergers and partnerships, and new business growth occur more easily when companies speak the same language.

Regardless of these changes, one fact will remain: the marketplace will insist upon instant, seamless and flawless service.