Multi-service aspects of universal personal telecommunication

The authors look at network and service invocation aspects of universal personal telecommunications beyond voice-based services offerings. With the developments in B-ISDN and advanced intelligent networks, there is a need to address issues which will impact on UPT service invocation across multiple networks and multiple services including multimedia services. The authors address aspects which need resolution when UPT is accessed across the current narrowband networks i.e. PSTN, ISDN, mobile, etc. and future B-ISDN. The main issues are the network architectures, service creation, service and network management, numbering and charging. The authors believe that the intelligent network will play a major role in enabling seamless UPT service carriage across multiple networks