Delivering converged services

As the telecommunication industry continues to evolve, data transport, once seen as the “killer” business opportunity, along with traditional voice services, have become commodity products with eroding margins and little opportunity for competitive differentiation.  Service providers find themselves looking for new sources of high-margin revenue, and a way to differentiate themselves within a chaotic, competitive environment and retain key customers.

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For service providers, enhanced and converged (hybrid) services provide unique value to their markets that are not available from their competitors.  The challenge service providers face is delivering these new services rapidly, efficiently and with a short-term return on investment at modest penetration levels.  So rather than chasing a “killer application” that may happen once every few years, how can service providers create a “killer application platform” that enables them to sustain a roll out of profitable new services?

Some telecom vendors have tried to take solutions designed to handle the bulk transport of voice and data, and re-apply it to a subscriber services environment.  These “media gateway” and “softswitch” solutions are made to deliver a cost-effective packet alternative to old tandem voice switches and offloading Internet dial-up traffic.  They are well suited for the transport of high volumes of voice and data traffic.

But service providers that want to deliver feature-rich subscriber services require a solution that meets a different set of application requirements. To meet these new requirements, some vendors are proposing 8 to 10 box configurations with a complex deployment architecture.  As a result, these multi-box, retro-fitted solutions present a difficult architecture to integrate, scale and operate new converged services, and in some cases making it impossible to deploy these services beyond a lab environment. 

Convergence means more than simply enabling voice and data to flow over a single network.

To successfully meet the challenge, service providers must find a solution designed to meet the specific requirements for delivering enhanced and converged services to subscribers that also provides operational simplicity and attractive economics.  Telecom vendors need to provide a comprehensive product suite including a service creation environment that enables rapid service creation, a flexible service delivery platform and management suite to rapidly deploy new services; and a provisioning environment that empowers service providers as well subscribers to quickly and efficiently manage their telephony and transaction activity.

Defining Convergence

Convergence means more than simply enabling voice and data to flow over a single network.  It is the ability to converge the information within each network in order to deliver additional subscriber value (services). Converged or hybrid services are often feature-rich applications that require a high-level of subscriber interaction. 

Converged services fall outside the IN/AIN call models, and can be triggered by the user through an IP entity (such as a PC, pager or SIP device) thus requiring rapid and efficient retrieval of the subscriber’s data or service profile to complete the requisite transactions.

Key obstacles to the creation and deployment of converged services have been the absence of a service delivery platform designed to offer comprehensive service creation tools, operational simplicity, flexibility and scalability, while delivering high performance and reliability.  And more importantly, a platform that leverages --not replaces--proven IN/AIN, Class 4/Class 5 and emerging softswitch architectures.

They are seeking to leverage existing investments in the proven IN/PSTN infrastructures by layering new technologies that require a lower capital outlay and offer revenue opportunity that accelerates ROI.

The Killer Platform

Different architectures are necessary to meet different sets of application requirements.  Unlike a PRI offload application where subscriber interaction is minimal or non-existent and the fundamental requirement is to transport and divert large volumes of voice and data traffic, converged or subscriber-centric services require a high-level of subscriber interaction and may be triggered by a web/IP event such as click-to-talk. 

The fundamental product requirement is to invoke and manage a full set of features on a per call/per subscriber basis. To deliver these subscriber-centric applications, call and application intelligence must be distributed to the edge of the provider’s network to meet the performance, scalability and manageability requirements necessary to deploy these applications.  The solution is a Converged Service Node that provides a scalable, integrated platform with a robust service logic execution environment and offers a comprehensive set of service creation tools.

By integrating key service delivery functionality (such as the media gateway, application server and call processing facility) into a single chassis, a Converged Service Node accelerates the deployment of new services and simplifies integration into existing network and operations support system infrastructures.  Layered APIs and standard protocol support gives service providers granular visibility and control over all resources allowing for the rapid deployment of new services.

A Converged Service Node within a distributed architecture offers service providers scalability within the box, within a cluster (rack), as well as providing infinite network-wide scalability ensuring superior service performance with attractive economics.  Finally, a converged service node natively supports TDM, ATM and IP devices and access networks so that converged (hybrid) services can be deployed with uniform economics and scalability.

Creating Converged Services

Developing these feature-rich applications means having a service creation environment (SCE) that supports services developed for the legacy IN infrastructure, which allows service providers to leverage investments made in IN technology, as well as support next-generation packet-based infrastructure.  They must be able to tap services and data from multiple networks--including IP and SS7/IN infrastructures--and include extensive tools for all phases of service development including:

• development of the service logic;

• development of provisioning, management and billing software;

• testing of the new application prior to installation into the live network;

• integration and deployment of the new service into the existing network and OSS of the service provider; and,

• commercial rollout.

Comprehensive libraries must be provided for application software development, testing, as well as the development of software for provisioning, management and billing integration. Service providers and third-party developers must be able to quickly and efficiently add customized library components to achieve new, provider-specific services that create a greater competitive advantage.  Industry-standard development tools, APIs and frameworks should be used to minimize application developers’ training and overhead development, as well as create code portability and break the dependence upon proprietary, vendor-specific platforms.

Once developed, provisioning and management of that service requires a tremendous amount of time.  The ability to manage account activity through a Web-based, user-friendly interface offers service providers an economical augmentation to its support capability while empowering subscribers to manage their service “on the fly” drastically reduces time and expense of deploying services.  Self-provisioning or “zero-touch provisioning” puts key functionality such as adding, deleting or modifying services in the hands of the user.

An Evolution not Revolution

With unfavorable market conditions and tightly controlled capital expenditures, service providers are not looking to invest in unproven solutions that offer marginal, long-term return on investment.  They are seeking to leverage existing investments in the proven IN/PSTN infrastructures by layering new technologies that require a lower capital outlay and offer revenue opportunity that accelerates ROI.  

Service providers understand the need for new services and the benefit of migrating to next-generation networks but must do due diligence to make sure that the solution they choose will carry them through the short-term to survive in the long-term.  Therefore, telecom vendors must provide comprehensive solutions that are designed to rapidly create, deploy and manage converged services and can demonstrate a rapid return (ideally under 18 months) on capital investment. 
Emre Onder is co-founder of Pelago Networks Inc., Marlborough, MA. His e-mail address is eonder@pelagonet.com. 

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