Jack Kozik

On opening PSTN to enhanced voice/data services — The PINT protocol solution

This paper describes the original PSTN/Internet INTernetworking (PINT) model, as defined by its namesake working group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It then focuses on the building blocks from which a broad range of intelligent network (IN)-initiated services can be built. The PINT approach systematically uses the IN as the means of uniting the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the Internet, which is natural since intelligent networking is a data communications technology. One goal of this paper is to show how the PINT initiative is bringing network intelligence to the edge of the network.

A Parlay and SPIRITS-based architecture for service mediation

Telecommunications service providers today have a great opportunity to leverage third-party content partners and enterprise network-hosted applications to generate new revenue; the industry has two service mediation technologies that are suitable for addressing this: Parlay and session initiation protocol (SIP). Parlay is a family of application programming interfaces (APIs) defined by an industry consortium seeking to standardize a set of abstract high-level interfaces for use by third-party programmers in building applications that leverage the services and functionality exposed by telecommunication network elements. SPIRITS, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) architecture and associated SIP-based protocol, enables call-processing elements in a telephone network to make service requests that are then processed on Internet-hosted servers. This paper presents a powerful approach for combining the advanced service creation capabilities of the Parlay API with the session control facilities of SIP to leverage the telecommunication network-hosted intelligent networking (IN) services through SPIRITS.

Authorization mechanisms for mobile commerce implementations in enhanced prepaid solutions

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) provides an exciting set of new capabilities that service providers can leverage to grow their revenue base while attracting new services that enhance the end-user experience. With these new opportunities the risk of new security threats that need to be addressed also arises. In this paper, security issues — in particular, those dealing with service and subscriber authorizations — in enhanced prepaid implementations for m-commerce — are discussed. These products typically provide an enriched rating engine and a highly configurable feature set for service and content charging in wireless networks. Client application and subscriber-level authentication and authorization are key mechanisms that serve to regulate access to, and usage of, content-based transactions in m-commerce. Solution architectures and a discussion of authorization criteria are presented.