SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




Richer Communication Services with Service Broker

TMCnews


TMCnews Featured Article


November 29, 2010

Richer Communication Services with Service Broker

By TMCnet Special Guest
Jonathan Bell, OpenCloud




The GSMA (News - Alert) Rich Communication Suite “RCS” is a suite of rich communication services that can be launched from a capability enhanced address book “EAB”. It provides awareness of which capabilities are supported together with availability and other presence information. The central premise is that this will greatly improve the user experience and will promote the usage of the rich communication services. 



RCS pilot schemes were run through the summer of 2010 involving several GSM Operators in France, Italy and Spain. Feedback from users during these trials has been very favorable and service usage increased considerably through the trial period. However, central to the RCS initiative is the premise that RCS will be built on and use the capabilities of IMS and secondly, it requires an enhanced handset. This means that service roll-out will necessarily have rather extended timescales, coupled as it is to network roll-out, coverage and handset availability.

Meanwhile, over-the-top service providers already have enhanced address books and utilise presence information. On television and in newspapers, Apple is advertising its FaceTime (News - Alert) video calling service extensively. Which all begs the question – will RCS be too little, too late? And what can be done now to deliver richer communication services?

Service Brokers have a role to play in delivering richer communications today and breaking this technology log-jam. Service Brokers may be used to enable the enhancement of standard telecoms services with additional information to deliver a richer communication experience. For example, standard voice calls (whether SS7 or IP-based) can be enhanced to utilise presence and location information that is available on a 3G network. When done in conjunction with an open smartphone environment, the location and presence information can also be displayed in the address book. Users can see whether their proposed contact is available, what services they support and if they’ve “subscribed in”, their location too.

Service Brokers provide an incremental approach to service extension. This means small step service enhancements may be made, or several enhancements packaged and delivered in one go. Operators can lead in service roll-out, rather than wait to deliver a universal, lowest common-denominator service across all operators. This is what the new competition is doing, after all.  

A central objective of RCS is creation of “user centric” services rather than “device” or “subscription”-centric services. If a user has several devices, then these should all be considered and available in delivering the service. For example, it should be possible to have a voice call via the mobile device and watch a shared video on a different device with better broadband access, for example a PC. This capability should be defined and controlled by the user’s preference settings and used by the service in real-time.  

A Service Broker can be used to create such a service, by blending the capabilities of the standard, existing services with additional information from the network. When invoked, the Service Broker can determine which devices to use (from preferences, capabilities, location and presence) and then ring them in parallel or sequence etc. When a particular device is answered, signalling to the others can be ended.

By implementing richer communication services using service brokers, Operators can deliver value to their customers today and meet the challenge being thrown down by the alternative service providers.


TMCnet publishes expert commentary on various telecommunications, IT, call center, CRM and other technology-related topics. Are you an expert in one of these fields, and interested in having your perspective published on a site that gets several million unique visitors each month? Get in touch.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca







Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2024 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy