Interworking capabilities in service brokers have been called the key to unlocking fast, efficient applications to network connectivity.

A service broker within a service provider’s network “provides a normalized application to network interworking software platform,” one that enhances a carrier’s ability to transition applications from one network to another on their own terms.

In short, the introduction of a service broker significantly lessens the resources and time required to bring new services to market when compared to the traditional application to network interworking and connectivity alternatives.

Ideally, of course, when it comes to interworking capabilities, a service broker should provide a set of pre-defined connectivity interworking options. As a reusable next gen/IMS network element, a service broker should provide any-to-any capabilities while providing configurable connectivity and interworking for IN to SIP, SIP to IN, IN to IN, and SIP to SIP. 

That’s in an ideal world. By doing so operators can use the most popular -- and by no coincidence most critical -- revenue generating telecom services and applications.

An example might help illustrate this: Tried and true telecom applications, such as pre-paid services, Voice VPN, Caller Ring Back tone and Network IVR, are all staples of an operator’s current and future network plans. That’s a given, nobody disputes that. Add in the need to account for network services like Local Number Portability, Toll Free and Calling Name and the ongoing convergence challenge can become quite complicated.

But the process can be simplified by presenting the operator with a toolkit of XML scripts for a level of flexibility and configuration capabilities which, if done right, can eliminate the need for costly, proprietary customization via outside vendors.

The library of pre-defined interworking scripts represents a growing list of capabilities that are supported within leading service broker solutions, adding that with over 20 predefined interworking solutions, the companies involved in the Service Broker Forum have some of the industry’s most innovative service broker offerings and functionality.