Universal personal telecommunication (UPT) service and architecture overview

Universal personal telecommunication (UPT) enables a user to receive incoming calls and initiate outgoing calls from any terminal on any network based on a unique, personal number called the UPT number. UPT will operate on terminals that are fixed (PSTN, ISDN) or mobile. All charges are based on the user´s UPT number rather than on the terminal address. The authors give an overview of the service provided by UPT. This overview shows the difference between UPT, a network intelligence based service, from mobility services provided by radio. The authors then outline the architectures which have been proposed for implementing UPT, and look at the different degrees of standardisation required for the two identified types of UPT