Telcos are opening their networks and standradizing interfaces for 3rd party development. Read more here to get an overview of telco assets and how you can use them to enrich your end user services.
Historically, mobile telecom (telco) assets necessary to provide rich end-users services have been difficult to access for 3rd parties, since telecom service development has normally been done using proprietary telco interfaces and platforms. This has affected suppliers operating within the industry but especially potential suppliers operating outside the telco sphere. As the telcos evolve and industries are converging, more and more features lying in the core network of operators are made available for 3rd party developers and the interfaces to access these assets are becoming more and more standardized.
The following figure describes possible assets available in a telco environment and how 3rd parties will be able to access these assets:
The range of assets existing in telco networks will differ from operator to operator. The following list describes possible assets offered by a telco operator:
Messaging
Enables your application to send, receive and process SMS, MMS, e-mail and IM messages and interact with the mobile subscriber over the network.
Positioning
Enables your application to receive and process subscriber positioning information over the network. Different positioning technologies with varying positioning accuracy exists. For positioning based on basic network information an accuracy of 1 - 5 km can typically be achieved.
Presence
Enables your application to receive and process subscriber presence information over the network. Generic presence information (from the mobile network) includes on/off and busy information. Richer presence information is available for subscribers using applications like IM.
Streaming
Enables your application to process and stream audio and video information to the mobile subscriber over the network. Enables your application to control premium rating of streaming traffic using event based or volume/time-based charging.
Data access
Enables your application to support authenticated data access over WAP or WEB. Also enables your application to control premium rating of data access and traffic using event based or volume/time-based charging.
Call control
Enables your application to control calls to or from mobile subscribers and to virtual numbers. Typical basic functions are call set-up, termination, prompt & collect, call diversion, transfer, queuing, hunting and conference calls. Calls can be initiated and terminated from the network (subscriber) or from your application.
Device management
Enables your application to acquire and process subscriber handset information from the network, typically handset model and capabilities, to be able to adapt service to the handset. DM also enables subscriber handset configuration over the network.
Customer data
Enables your application to retrieve and process subscription and demographic customer information. Subscription information may include user segment, subscription type, usage information aso. Demographic information may include name, gender, age, place of residence aso. Access to customer data may be quite restricted in many of Telenors operations.
Charging
Enables your application to process and issue transactions to charge the subscriber for the service usage.
3rd parties can either use one or a combination of these assets to enrich their end-user services. As the eco-system of 3rd parties evolves we will also see the increasing use of mash-ups, where service suppliers not only use operator assets but also assets made available from other service suppliers.
In order to standardize the access to and simplify the use of the telco assets, telco operators will normally deploy an abstraction layer, oftenly referred to as a service delivery platform (SDP). Service applications can access the operator assets trough the SDP using open, technology-independent application programming interfaces (API). These industry standard open interfaces will release service developers from underlying protocols, networks complexity, and complex platform environments. For this purpose Telenor, as well as many other mobile operators, targets the use of parley X, which is a telco specific implementation of Web Services.
The playground™ Lab:
The purpose of the playground lab is to provide a live telco environment, giving 3rd parties access to some of the operator assets listed above. Currently, in the playground lab, we offer the following assets to our partners:
- Messaging
- Location
- Charging
- Customer data
- Call Control
As Telenor playground evolves, more assets will be made available to our partners in the lab. The main drive for the evolution of our lab will be the playground service road maps and the assets required to achieve that road map. If you have services requiring other assets than what is available in the playground lab today, include such requirements in you partnership application.