Evolution of Telecommunication Services

The Internet as the largest global recognized communication system is in constant change and evolves in dimensions of technology, capacity, availability and size continuously since its beginnings in the late 1960’s. The openness and its continuous change became characteristics of the Internet nowadays, but were no available in its origins. This chapter presents an overview about the telecommunication network and control platform evolution from classic fixed Circuit-Switched (CS) on to current fixed and mobile Next-Generation-Networks (NGN) towards future networks trends. Furthermore the Fixed-Mobile-Covergence (FMC) is presented and technology specific details are presented exemplarily.

In the late 1980s, the open telecommunication services market was proclaimed in many vision statements and research papers, and regulative actions were taken to establish it. Today, due to the convergence of telecommunications, information technologies, Internet, World Wide Web and finally entertainment together with global markets and competition, we are living in an open multimedia services market and the information society is reality. As the competition between operators and service providers in the communications sector increases through, the actual value of networks and communications is decreasing. The remaining assets for future growth of the companies rely on the value of services, content and end systems that are increasing substantially within the new world of convergence and the much more complex multimedia services value chain that has emerged. The split of networks, service platforms, services and content requires on the one hand clear positioning of market players to face these challenges and on the other hand to establish a technological foundation for open business models. In this chapter, we want to trace the evolution of service and service platform concepts in telecommunications and outline technologies for converging networks and services and their latest developments.

With the introduction of IMS based multimedia communication services, the need rises for a framework similar to Intelligent network (IN). The IN standard is used for augmenting Circuit switched (CS) networks like PSTN and PLMN (GSM, 3G). The IN standard is grafted on CS network paradigms and principles and is, in its native form, not suitable for IP communication networks like IMS. Within IMS, communication services are realized through Application servers (AS). AS’s are connected to IMS core network in a manner that resembles, to some extent, Value added services (VAS) for CS networks. The combination of IMS core network and IMS Application servers provides network architecture for ‘basic multimedia communication’, including, but not limited to, telephony, video calling and messaging. In order to go beyond this set of basic communication services, the concept of VAS is equally needed in IMS. But in a different way! At the same time, network operators want to safeguard their investment in VAS in the CS network. In addition, operators require ‘service parity’ when introducing IMS. Hence, the introduction of VAS in the IMS network shall comprise a level of backwards compatibility. The introduction, and further development of, VAS in IMS gives rise to interesting network architecture, allowing for seamless integration of CS network and IMS network, augmenting the communication services, such as telephony, as is appropriate for the class of network used by the served subscriber. Protocols and procedures will be different, but fundamental service principles remain the same!

In the fast changing world of telecommunications, apparently dominated by dynamic downloads of Over The Top applications, one may wonder if standardization still has a role to play. After studying this question and concluding in a positive way, this section provides an overview of who are the active standards bodies and highlights their main "products", such as the Next Generation Network on the fixed side for ETSI TISPAN or 3GPP Release 5 and later for the mobile side. Some explanations are also given on how these bodies work together - or sometimes against each other.

While starting as an experimental research topic in the early seventies VoIP went through different stages before becoming a commodity service competing with the circuit switched telephony and in some cases even replacing it. In this chapter we give a brief overview of the major developments in the area of voice over IP (VoIP) and look at the major milestones and competing standards. We further give a short look into the latest developments and recent applications and deployment scenarios.

Trying to analysis why some standards did not fulfill all the operators and vendors expectations constitutes the objective of this chapter. NGN was supposed to be the network ecosystem for fixed access on which operators will develop services, while IMS was expected as the universal one for mobile and fixed access. Both NGN and IMS have benefit of a huge manpower investment in standardization bodies. A clear understanding of what happened can greatly contribute to better foresee the architecture for the next generations networks ...

Telecom services and internet services have traditionally been deployed using very different service architectures, conforming to different sets of industry standards. With the evolution of the network infrastructure to NGN and with the migration of both IT and telecom services to the cloud, there is an increasing harmonization of service architectures and an increasing adoption of IT technology within telecom environments. In this chapter, we describe how standardization activities in the IT industry have helped to transform the internet into a global service infrastructure and how a combination of standard technologies, open APIs and common platforms has helped to drive the growth of web services. We also highlight some of the emerging standards and platforms that are shaping the mobile application and cloud computing spaces.

Ecosystem is probably one of the most discussed terms in recent telco discussions. But are the common questions about new APIs and industry standards enough to lead telcos towards a telco ecosystem? This chapter discusses, which other elements are essential for an ecosystem and which aspects might be missing in the current discussion of telcos. The model of the shaping strategy is introduced to describe successful ecosystems such as Apple, Google or i-mode, which typically requires three essential components: First the shaping view, second shaping platform and third shaper acts and assets. This leads to a better understanding where the shortcomings of telcos are so far and where still potential opportunities are.

Device categories are converging, operating systems proliferating and physical devices are becoming more and more interconnected. However, to develop an application for different devices is extremely difficult and complex whereby Web technologies are a good candidate to solve this problem. To support application developers multiple approaches currently exist that providing solutions for platform independent application development based on Web technologies. In this chapter an overview about current Web application related activities is given and the webinos Web runtime is introduced. Webinos goes another step further by also exposing features of remote devices and services as well as allowing developing distributed Web applications.

The technological and market scenarios of cloud computing is dominated by web companies. They are offering cloud services in a walled garden fashion creating a wide segmentation in the market. Telcos will successfully compete in this market if they bring disruption at the technological and at the market level. This means to introduce new technical capabilities as well as new business models that exceed the value proposition of the “pay per use” and are catalysts of new ecosystems. The chapter describes how Telcos can meet this challenge.

The challenge for the Telco is to find a viable technological and market perspective for escaping from the consolidation of current business. The paper argues that the virtualization and the creation of a platform for supporting a Virtual Continuum between real objects and their clones in the cloud can be a means to radically transform the present service paradigm. In order to achieve this goal the Telcos have to design, implement and deploy a new platform for future networks that enables the role of Service Enabler. The platform has to displace the consolidate client server paradigm addressing enabling distributed processing technologies like: software defined networking, overlay, and autonomic networking.

This chapter addresses the Internet of Things (IoT); from the concept and fundamental characteristics to the advantages of machine-to-machine communications, as well as the key requirements for the IoT. Examples of the IoT are illustrated, including their core technologies. Architectural models for the IoT are presented to identify related functionalities. This chapter also introduces recent efforts towards standardization of the various technical aspects.

As the relentless march towards an Internet of Services (IoS) continues, it is of utmost importance for the telecoms industry to understand what the IoS is and upon what foundations and methodologies the IoS is based and built on. Further, how the telecom industry can leverage IoS research and push IoS capabilities on and beyond through innovation and how those services within the IoS should be designed and implemented need to be understood. Not only are these questions answered but also so as not to remain stationary in the world of IoS, the telecoms industry must comprehend the upcoming challenges and opportunities that the IoS will present. Within this chapter there are two perspectives taken on the more specific aspects of engineering services for the IoS. The first takes a first principles approach whereas the second takes one from the basis of an innovative methodology. This chapter will provide information and insights that seek to answer the former questions, starting with a discussion on what exactly a service is, moving through the innovation, design and implementation of IoS and its services, and finally arriving at a demonstrator of IoS that points towards its own future.