Beyond IN and UPT-a personal communications support system based on TMN concepts

The vision for future telecommunications is often described by the slogan “information at any time, at any place, in any form”, driven by both society´s increasing demand for “universal connectivity” and the technological progress in the area of mobile computing and personal communications. In order to realize this vision, the emerging concept of personal communications support (PCS), which includes support for personal mobility, service personalization, and advanced service interoperability, is becoming increasingly important since it allows users to configure their communications environment in accordance with their individual needs, thereby providing them with controlled access to telecommunication services, regardless of their current location, terminal and network capabilities. This paper provides an overview of a personal communications support system (PCSS). The PCSS represents a platform providing advanced PCS capabilities in a uniform way to numerous communication applications in distributed multimedia environments. From a functional perspective, the PCSS provides enhanced intelligent network (IN) and universal personal telecommunication (UPT) capabilities with respect to user addressing (based on logical names instead of numbers) and advanced user control capabilities. From a design perspective, the centralistic IN/UPT approach to the realization of service logic has been replaced by a highly distributable, object-oriented approach based on X.500/X.700/telecommunications management network (TMN) concepts. This paper addresses the basic aspects of the PCSS, including design criteria, system architecture, supported applications, and evolution issues