Musa Unmehopa

The support of mobile Internet applications in UMTS networks through the open service access

Third-generation wireless networks are expected to enable the mobile Internet to become a reality, offering fast Internet access and high-speed data services to mobile subscribers. For network operators to allow for the rapid development of innovative value-added applications on the scale seen in the Internet today, the wireless core network needs to be opened up for third-party applications provided by independent software vendors (ISVs). The Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is currently working on the production of technical specifications to provide a mechanism that would permit ISVs a standard interface to access network capabilities traditionally available to network operators. Within 3GPP, this mechanism is commonly referred to as the open service access (OSA). This open service access is predominantly targeted at Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks, allowing application developers to access the feature-rich core network capabilities. This open access enables network operators to offer innovative services to their subscribers allowing the ability to differentiate themselves in a competitive market. With the imminent commercial deployment of the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), existing fixed-line Internet service providers (ISPs) can now offer mobile Internet to end users in a UMTS environment where the responsibility of the network operator is reduced to providing IP connectivity. The increased competition from ISPs poses a big threat to the revenue stream of the network operator. This paper explores the possibilities of OSA to facilitate network operators in providing the mutual support of network capabilities and Internet content. These possibilities would allow the network operator to become a value-added mobile Internet service provider (VAM-ISP).3

The open mobile alliance and trends in supporting the mobile services industry

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is the leading industry forum for generating market-driven specifications for interoperable mobile service enablers to facilitate global user adoption of mobile multimedia services. Since its formation in 2002, the OMA has made significant progress in delivering several enablers in areas such as mobile Web services, push-to-talk over cellular, and presence, and it plans to deliver many more enablers in the coming years. This paper discusses the various projects undertaken by the OMA working groups that deal with multiservice networks and offers an early perspective on the mapping and evolution of the OMA enablers that are part of the overall OMA service environment (OSE), which spans all mobile access and core network technologies. The ideas presented in this paper are solely those of the authors; they do not reflect an official OMA point of view.

Service control for next-generation applications in wireless IP multimedia networks

Within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the thrust of the session initiation protocol (SIP)-based Internet protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS) is envisaged to allow a swift progression towards the provision of multimedia applications for increasingly demanding end users. The paradigm of service programmability using open network application programming interfaces (APIs), with open service access (OSA) as its main exponent, is helping to drive this development together with the use of SIP. The focal point of this paper will be the multimedia services architecture in the IMS by providing details of the interaction of the IMS and the application servers in the form of the OSA gateway and the SIP application server. The paper aims to assess the value of the IMS service control (ISC) interface on application server interaction in the IMS. The paper will provide an OSA application use case, and will also present the presence server as an example of a SIP application server that fits in with the IMS.

Validation of the Open Service Access API for UMTS Application Provisioning

UMTS networks will allow the deployment of new types of applications, that are rich, interactive and multimedia capable, because of increased bandwidth, richer devices and location awareness. These applications are not necessarily provided by the network operator, but can be created and deployed by any third party. However, these third parties will need access to the UMTS core network capabilities, especially when it comes to call related services, location based services and services that charge for certain content. Intelligent Network (IN) based service creation and delivery platforms deployed in current 2G and 2.5G networks do not offer suitable interfaces for this, since third parties need to have detailed knowledge and expertise of low level, telecommunication specific protocols and can jeopardize the integrity of the network. The recent activities within the standardization bodies 3GPP and ETSI SPAN, and the industry forums Parlay and JAIN show an increased interest in the area of open network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The Open Service Access (OSA) specification is a collection of open network APIs for UMTS application provisioning defined by 3GPP. OSA is meant to allow third party application development and deployment by means of open, secure, and standardized access to core network capabilities, while preserving the integrity of the underlying network. We describe a prototype implementation, and list the possibilities and limitations of the OSA specification.

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.

Research and reality: The evolution of Open Network API standards

This document investigates the evolution of the Open Network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from a research and industrial perspective over the last 15 years. It provides insight into the work currently ongoing in the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and GSM Association (GSMA) with regards to creating developer friendly APIs and delivering them to the market. Finally, it outlines the current research ongoing within the Open API sphere and provides some recommendations for the standardization forums of the communications industries in order to more fully align with this work.

Enhanced active phone book services: Blended lifestyle services made real!

Typical address book software provides for personalization of the end user service experience and introduces a level of stickiness to a service offering. There are tremendous opportunities to extend this experience into a true blended lifestyle service by enhancing the basic functionality with dynamic and context-sensitive features. Enhanced active phone book services introduce an innovation that offers value-add through cleverly blending various next-generation service enablers and network capabilities into a dynamic address book for the user, spanning wireless and converged networks. This paper outlines the enhanced active phone book value proposition for service providers, paints the standards landscape underpinning the service, and offers design choices for a possible platform architecture that supports the service.

Service mediation standards

The trend in service standardization has moved away from specifying individual services, via the classification of service toolkits, to the concept of defining a service mediation architecture. The prime objective of service mediation is the proliferation of innovative end-user applications by means of network transparency and abstracted network capabilities. This implies requirements alignment and also dependencies and harmonization between various involved standards bodies. This paper addresses the impact of these implications, as well as the latest developments and directions in service mediation standards and why and how these are different from traditional standards with respect to issues like conformance and backwards compatibility. The paper homes in on Parlay and Open Service Access (OSA) in particular and looks at how Parlay/OSA capabilities are evolving and how they relate to the Web Services model. The recent embracing of JAIN∗ and Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) as technology realization of the common Parlay/OSA interface definitions are also discussed.

The Parlay proxy manager — Architecture considerations

The Parlay/OSA standards enable service providers to safely expose, in a regulated manner, pre-packaged network service capabilities to a large body of external third-party application developers. The objective is to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of new applications that could significantly enhance the end-user experience and improve the revenue-generating potential. The Parlay/OSA model supports service sessions to permit client applications to connect to various services hosted by a Parlay or open service access (OSA) gateway. Framework services may be configured to enable a suitable distribution of load at a session level granularity among the various service instances. Finer granularity of request distribution and more reliable end-to-end service access may be achieved through support for proxy manager architectures. In this paper, we present schemes for load distribution and higher reliability, and proxy manager architecture alternatives. We then further extend the proxy concept to application mediation and cross-protocol, cross-domain service reuse.