Incorporation of the Universal Communications Identifier (UCI) to NGN

Electronic communication is becoming increasingly complex. Consumers currently expect to have a new identity for every new communications service - i.e. one address for e-mail, another for telephone, a third for mobile etc. For a couple of years, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) has been working on the development of the universal communications identifier (UCI), a system which aims to bind many services to a single identity and manage the communications with a personal user manager. This technology could see the end of the proliferation of complex addresses, numbers and other user identifiers in use today. The objective of the current work in ETSI on UCI is to increase the chance that the benefits that UCI brings will be made available to all citizens of Europe at the earliest opportunity and would ensure that its realization would be a key differentiator for NGN (next generation network). The paper provides a review and assessment as to what extent existing ETSI TISPAN NGN standards and specifications support elements of a UCI implementation and how, if necessary, they should be adapted in order to more fully support complete UCI implementation. The analysis presented is restricted to UCI incorporation to TISPAN NGN architecture.