The impact of forensic computing on telecommunications

The increasing use of telecommunications, particularly the development of e-commerce, is steadily increasing the opportunities for crime in many guises, especially IT-related crime. In response, there is an urgent new demand for forensic computing, that is, the examination of IT equipment and systems in order to obtain information for criminal or civil investigations. This field is not yet well developed, but its needs will in the future begin to influence telecommunications as investigations are extended to include the use of the communications infrastructures and services. IT security technologies alone are not sufficient to deal with this. The telecommunications industry, its customers, and regulators will face difficult challenges in the provision and use of systems that will be safe, reliable, and auditable. These challenges will need solutions addressing technical, legal, regulatory, and social issues and will not be easily resolved. This article summarizes the state of forensic computing, its likely future development, and its impact on telecommunications, and identifies several research and development issues.     

Enhancing telecommunications service engineering with mobile agenttechnology and formal methods

In order to be competitive, telecommunications service providers need new technologies that facilitate the rapid introduction of validated services in a cost-effective manner. Service engineering is a new discipline in which the telecommunications sector addresses the technologies and engineering processes required for service creation. Concurrent with these studies the development of applications in the Internet shows a new way to design telecommunications services based on the mobile agent paradigm. This brings new concepts that fit the requirements of service engineering. Therefore merging the approaches enables improvement of the service creation process. We illustrate this by presenting a framework for the formal design of telecommunications services using mobile agent technology complemented with formal methods. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, it relies on the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) and shows how to adapt its concepts to agent orientation. Second, it provides agent-based service designers with validation and verification tools to state the quality of their specifications     

Supplier quality improvement-the key to long-term qualityrelationships

A vital and large part of maintaining high national telecommunications standards is the success of telecommunications suppliers in providing quality products and services for the nation's telecommunications network. A supplier quality improvement program has been developed to address this objective. The program stresses long-term relationships between the telephone companies and their suppliers with an emphasis on customer-supplier teamwork. The goal of this teamwork is the evolution of suppliers who consistently bring quality products and services to the network and who continually strive to improve their operations. The responsibilities of both customers and suppliers is the initiation and implementation of a supplier quality improvement program are described     

A structure analysis of interrelationships among regions based on freight,postal od flows,and telecommunications in Japan

It is well known that infrastructure networks are key factors for social change. Historically, the Japanese government has not paid serious attention to the importance of telecommunications in terms of its infrastructure development, focusing, instead, upon both transportation and postal services. This paper empirically identifies interrelationships among Japanese prefectures in terms of transportation, telecommunications and postal OD (Origin and Destination) flows. The empirical results can serve as a policy basis for the development of a new social infrastructure in the information generation. In this study, the relationships are examined, using a mathematical model. Japanese prefectures are examined in a multi-dimensional space. The asymmetry of the flows are explicitly incorporated in this study. Our empirical research results found various patterns in the regional interrelationships, depending upon the type of infrastructure examined.     

On the Role of Telecommunications in the Development of Nations

Both in developed and developing nations there is a clear need to discriminate among all the numerous choices of telecommunications technologies and services that have been, are, or can be developed. This discrimination should be based on a knowledge of the likely effects of each of those services on the community and its environment; discrimination can no longer be left open to the sole forces of the market and it is within the engineering function to provide value judgments on the technologies it produces. In developing nations where there is a strong shortage of capital, the telecommunication planner's problem is not one of satisfying demand indiscriminately at fair prices ensuring a reasonable financial return to the firm but rather to find a strategy of service growth that will be optimal for the country or parts thereof. The comparison of alternative investment plans in the telecommuncations sector should proceed, therefore, attending to the measure in which each one can contribute towards these general objectives. Inasmuch as progress towards the different national targets is unlikely to allow for a single measure common to all of them, investment plans that are optimal with regard to different targets will also not be comparable with one another and the choice between optimal plans escapes the sector and becomes a matter of subjective national policy. Telecommunication planners should be able to find such optimal strategies and to supply global planners with elements of judgment suitable to support the decision of allocation of resources to the telecommunication sector. A review of published material in this field shows that progress towards such a situation has been very small. The paper then discusses some ideas on how the study of interaction between telecommunications and society could be advanced within a frame of reference given by current knowledge in the social sciences and in telecommunication technology.     

Operations planning strategies for new network services andtechnologies

An approach for using computer-based operations systems not only to support new telecommunications technologies and services but to facilitate their introduction is described. This approach is considered beneficial to telephone companies for two reasons. First, operations processes can become increasingly automated, allowing manual procedures to be phased out. Second, operations need to become an integral part of new network technologies and services to help provide the advanced telecommunications services that customers are demanding. It is demonstrated that joint planning for services, technologies, networks, and operations in the early stages of a project can result in rapid, but orderly, evolution     

基于3G无线通信网络的用户维系服务系统研究

随着中国电信行业的不断发展,电信企业竞争由质量相当的网络资源转移到差异化的服务竞争,提高客户满意度和维系客户关系成为提升企业核心竞争力的有效手段之一.基于此提出了一种新的基于3G无线通信网络的用户维系服务系统架构,并基于此架构,提出了用户维系服务系统的主要功能设计思路,为电信运营商在新的3G业务模式下有效开展用户服务维系,进行了有益的探索和尝试.     

Operational Support Systems for Carrier-Scale IP Networks

The operational support systems (OSS) of any major telecommunications operator are the underlying resource for the management and delivery of all its communications services. It is used for handling direct customer interactions (helpdesk, orders, fault handling, billing, etc) and for the processes involved in managing the services and the networks on which they are supported. Many such services and networks are rapidly evolving in the Internet protocol (IP) era with a consequent requirement for radical improvements and streamlining in the design of the OSS. This paper describes some of the challenges faced by BT in the quest to design IP OSS for future operations.     

IN architectures for implementing universal personaltelecommunications

This article focuses on architectures for providing universal personal telecommunications (UPT) service to wireline users. Although UPT services could be provided to users of wireless phones, thereby giving those users personal communication services (PCS), the wireline environment introduces certain important complications. Unlike "smart" cellular phones, which can register themselves and the user automatically, wireline telephones are unable to automatically detect and register a UPT user. UPT therefore includes a manual registration procedure to associate a PTN with the phone where calls will be received or placed. Also, unlike personal communications terminals that are typically used by only one person, wireline phones are likely to be shared among other users. Therefore, the network must keep track of who is using the phone, so it can provide the appropriate telecommunications services. It would be difficult or impossible to implement UPT as a switch-based service. Fortunately, an intelligent network (IN) architecture that is well suited for implementing UPT is being deployed by many local exchange (LECs) and interexchange carriers (IXCs)     

Universal broadband mobility target for post-TINA infrastructure:toward the fourth generation

Future universal broadband mobile services present a challenge for telecommunications architectures, control, and management. The focus of the future mobile (fourth) generation vision is turned from capacity to services, from radio to network-wide issues. New types of applications will evolve that should be supported by an adequate programmable intelligent telecommunications infrastructure. A convergence between telecom and datacom networks will happen based on the communications middleware concept, which will provide universal secure connectivity between mobile users and their applications. Actual specifications of TINA-C do not address all such necessary issues. There is a need for technology evolution, enhancement, and integration to meet these new requirements at different levels. The author the concept of the universal broadband mobile telecommunications systems (UBMTS, or simply UBM) described as fourth-generation mobile systems. The UBMTS objective is both to extend mobile user access to the range of broadband services that will exist for broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) users, and to extend the customization of new services related to personal communications systems (PCS) users     

CEPT Long Term Telecommunications Studies

The CEPT Long Term Studies Ad Hoc Working Group was formed in March 1971. Its responsibility is primarily with the period between 10 and 30 years hence. During 1971 and 1972, its activities were mainly for "Project 20" (carried out by CEPT for COST). This project had three phases: an assessment of the amount and types of telecommunications services likely to be provided up to 1985 (including new services), an assessment of the technological implications, and an identification of possible areas where cooperative research and development proposals could be formulated. As a result of this work, a short list of 13 topics for possible collaborative research and development studies by administrations was drawn up. Phase 1 of Project 20 had indicated extremely wide variations between administrations in their forecasts for new services. The recent activities of the Working Group have therefore concentrated upon the estimation of long term demand for telecommunications services. A set of studies are in hand (each led by one administration) on the following subjects: the long term growth of telephone service, external factors likely to influence long term demand for telecommunications, possibilities for new telecommunications services arising from technological developments, the application of advanced telecommunications services in the field of education, and the potential of telecommunications as a substitute for face-face-to-face business meetings. Each of these studies is described and discussed.     

Rural Telecommunications in Latin America

Over the last decade, Latin American telecommunications authorities have shown a growing concern for rural services reflecting their governments' increasing interest in this subject in the context of social and economic development. This paper presents a broad review of the existing situation of rural telecommunications in Latin America; details, though interesting in some cases, are not included except when necessary for the interpretation of the general problem. Rural communications, as reported here, refers only to telephony and telegraphy; other services, especially radio and television broadcasting, are not considered although they can be related to rural programs.     

In search of gigabit applications

Applications in existing specialized, metacomputer environments and those yet to be developed for services such as telecommunications, distributed data, and image transfer that will require networks which can handle volumes of data on the order of gigabits per second are discussed. Specific examples are presented from the fields of computational science, data navigation, and collaborative environments and instrument control. It is concluded that distributed computing and collaborative environments that support the interaction of multiple computers, as well as the interaction of computers with humans, are the paradigms that will characterize gigabit applications     

Speech coding for telecommunications

The function of a speech coding algorithm is to convert an analogue speech signal into a digital form for efficient transmission over a digital path, or efficient storage on a digital storage medium, and to perform the complementary function of converting a received digital signal back to analogue form. The article reviews those speech coding techniques which are already being extensively used in telecommunications applications. As well as explaining the basic principles employed by these speech coding algorithms to achieve efficient digital encoding, examples of telecommunications services which use these algorithms are presented     

A historical perspective of CSTA

Computer-supported telecommunications applications (CSTA) is one of the more important standards for computer-telecommunications interfaces, addressing service and protocol definitions used to provide a link between computers and telecommunications systems. The services provided on a CSTA link between a telecommunications and computer network work much like the services that telecommunication network provides to a user at an access point. At the point of attachment to a telecommunications network, the “phone numbers” are sufficient to describe the desired object for involvement with a service. If a new object were created for the purposes of CSTA (e.g., a monitoring group), an identifier which would work like a phone number in that network would be assigned to that object. Additional handle-identifiers are created and provided after a service is initiated to differentiate between instances of the service being provided. To show this relationship, a functional model was created     

Detecting OAM&P design defects using a feature interaction approach

In the telecommunications service engineering world, the feature interaction (FI) problem is defined as the situation in which running services at the same time undesirably alters their behaviour. It is also known as the service interaction problem. FIs may occur between various types of services, ranging from signalling protocol features to value‐added end‐user services. The problem has been widely investigated for those types of services. However, sufficient attention has not been paid to operation, administration, management and provisioning (OAM&P) features like creating a new customer account or registering a new gateway as part of the network. The present paper addresses the detection of OAM&P FIs in Internet telephony architectures. The solution consists in an adapted version of a known FI detection method. A simple feature modelling language and an FI detection procedure are proposed. A validation with a case study is also reported. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Telecommunications and the future

The effect of deregulation on the telecommunications industry and GTEs strategy in the resulting competitive environment are examined. The impact of increased competition on research and development efforts is discussed. The relationships among the US Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the industry are explored. Economic factors in a system that carries unregulated as well as regulated services and goals for the industry are considered     

New Products for Old — Making a Profit

We all know how much it costs to make a telephone call — or do we? There are over 150 companies in the UK telecommunications market-place, all with their own unique blend of people, processes and systems, and operating costs. There are even more packages of services and prices, aimed at different segments of the market, and it is vital to each operator, including BT, that these packages actually make money. In order to understand how to set prices, BT needs to understand the basis of its costs, how these are allocated to the different services, and which services contribute revenue over and above these costs. This applies to both retail trading, and also wholesale trading, within BT and between BT and other operators for interconnect services. This paper looks at the process of engineering networks to meet the demand for BT's services, and applies whole-life financial techniques to identify how much it really costs the business to offer these services. It looks at BT's wholesale pricing, and at how trading units within the company can build relationships that lead to both the profitable operation of existing services, and the successful introduction of new services. It looks at the evolution of network platforms, new product development, and the effects of pricing options, from the present day until well into the next century.     

An architectural approach to minimizing feature interactions intelecommunications

Feature interaction, in the context of telecommunications, is the phenomenon where a user (end-user or system operator) observes services failing to perform as expected, and where the failures are due to the presence of other services (or multiple instances of a single service) in the network. We propose an architectural approach to minimize the problem of feature interaction while increasing the reusability of software for services. Our approach recognizes that currently many assumptions about service operations and system capabilities are implicitly built into the service software architecture. We claim that many nontrivial feature interactions arise when services or technologies with new capabilities, based on conflicting assumptions, are introduced. We propose an architecture based on software agents and separation of concerns. A processing model for service-independent interaction management within the agent architecture is discussed. This architecture effectively removes many common assumptions about roles and technology from the service software architecture, thus reducing the need to provide ad hoc solutions to particular feature interactions. We demonstrate the power of such an architecture by showing how it deals with examples of interactions among existing services, interactions introduced by Universal Personal Telecommunications (UPT), and its applicability to emerging broadband and multimedia service requirements. We also consider the architecture in the context of the intelligent network     

Sri Lanka and Canada: A comparison of telematic policy developments

The Canadian experience, though not wholly relevant to small developing countries like Sri Lanka, may have long term relevance. Canada took the strategic path of developing its telecommunications (including broadcasting) infrastructure as a response to the convergence of technologies and problems of cultural diversity and demographic dispersion. It did not simultaneously provide the impetus for the development of computer products and services which could be demanded by the expanded Canadian telemarket, leading to market penetration by overseas producers. Sri Lanka, despite its low capability in the area of telematics and informatics, does not perceive external penetration to be a threat, because of the relatively underdeveloped telecommunications systems. However, the new technologies have transborder dimensions which must be carefully examined in terms of opportunities and threats presented to a country's industrialization, investment promotion, telecommunications, energy, education and information policies.