Intelligent network gains new ground

Intelligent network services were initially designed to generate new revenue, but carriers had difficulty justifying the cost because oftheir low return on investment. Now, with lower, more realistic expectations, carriers are looking to deploy intelligent network services from new angles-but they still hope for payback.

Within the last three weeks, Lucent announced two intelligent network customer wins: Pioneer Telephone Cooperative and US LEC. Pioneer has chosen a single platform that allows it to deploy wireless and wireline services. US LEC has chosen a $5 million Advanced Intelligent Network system that will be located in Charlotte, N.C., and Norfolk, Va.

Pioneer, one of the oldest cooperatives in the U.S., is based in Kingfisher, Okla., and has been serving that state since 1953. The cooperative's network includes 76 exchanges, covers 10,000 square miles and provides service to 150,000 wireline and wireless customers. It also maintains one of the regional signal transfer points within Illuminet's SS7 network.

Pioneer spent two years searching for and choosing an intelligent network platform. Pioneer's objectives were to find a platform that could combine wireline and wireless services and interface with its Nortel DMS-100, -500 and Lucent 5ESS equipment.

"Our priority was to find one platform that would control costs, minimize technology obsolescence and serve all our business lines-local exchange carrier, long-distance, and interexchange," said Richard Ruhl, general manager for Pioneer. "There is a market for mid-sized companies, such as ourselves, that can't afford to deploy separate platforms for both sides of the business. Lucent was the only provider that had a solution operational."

Pioneer's planned services include prepaid wireless, short message service center and call screening. Other applications include enhanced 911, location-based services, calling party pays and voice activated dialing for wireline and wireless customers.

The services will be rolled out in three phases. Later this summer, Pioneer will begin offering prepaid services for long-distance and wireless customers. Short messaging and call screening services are scheduled for September, and other applications are projected for an early 2000 timetable.

Pioneer's realistic approach and vision for its intelligent network impressed Lucent. "Intelligent network platforms are not an easy sell because we haven't found a silver bullet service," said Beth Morris, market manager for global commercial market for intelligent network product at Lucent. "It helps when carriers have an incremental view [on investment returns]. The Pioneer decision was smart because they looked at a variety of service functions from their customer set and built an incremental business case. They didn't expect only one service to provide financial gain."

US LEC, which plans to have its Advanced Intelligent Network in operation by the end of 1999, has decided to offer calling card, toll-free enhancement, virtual private network, accounting codes and special call routing services. In addition to its 12 Lucent switches and a mated signal transfer point from Tekelec, US LEC will add a mated eight-link signal control point with a bundled service package application from Lucent.

Lucent's Morris believes the intelligent network market could grow due to merging companies and those with global expansion in mind. "We find that without fail everyone resonates that you can use intelligent networks to support a variety of international interfaces. As we talk to CLECs and PCS providers, we see that this is something they want to have options for, even if they aren't using them today. "For merging carriers," Morris adds, "As service providers merge, they bring together different focuses and customer sets. [The intelligent network] provides the glue to deliver common functionality and to build brand identification."

* GO WITH THE FLOW Netcom Systems' SmartFlow is a network test application designed to measure the performance and behavior of policy-based network devices. It allows users to assess how well new network devices handle priority-based vs. non priority-based traffic, how many queues are in the device, the quality of high priority traffic, and what happens to low and high priority traffic under congestion/port over-subscription conditions.

* IP HIGHWAY DRIVES QOS IPHighway has introduced its Open Policy System 1.0, which allows service providers to automatically configure networks to meet customers' application and bandwidth needs. Their products are based on a distributed policy architecture that scales to any size Internet implementation.