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Table of contents
of the current issue 

Selected Highlights
	The socio- economic dimensions of Ambient Intelligence
	Why longitudinal social surveys matter
	Interview with sociologist Leslie Haddon
	Interview with OECD experts

The first five Eurescom studies of 2004 are running. There will be another four to six studies started during the second half of 2004. 

ID Management Enabling AAA Services (P1441)

During the last two years, standards for the management of online identities started to establish themselves on the Internet and especially in Web technologies. Identity Management (IDM) has the potential to leverage business and service aggregation on the Internet by making services easier to use and involved parties more trustworthy.

This study will look at the potentials to integrate http-level identity management with network-level authentication found in carriers’ infrastructures. Central questions will be:

•  What are the dangers to carriers’ customer relationships through online-enabled identity providers?

• How can telcos position themselves in this emerging market making use of existing AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) infrastructures?

• Can acceptance of telcos’ Internet services be improved, using Identity Management?

• Can telcos services, like accounting and billing, be adopted to work in an Identity Management environment?

The key results will be a set of service scenarios presented in terms of technological and business approaches, and some recommendations for telcos:

• Architecture and standardisation recommendations

•  Regulatory aspects

• Strategic positioning of telcos

For more information contact: Christian Hellwig, hellwig@eurescom.de
 

New Market Opportunities by Galileo Satellite Services (P1442)

The development of the European satellite navigation system Galileo will be finished in 2006, the deployment of the 30 satellites in 2008. Companies that want to develop innovative and attractive new services, applications or devices have to start now to be ready in time.

The main objectives of the study:

•  Identify Galileo characteristics that are key factors for telco opportunities

• Identify potential applications and service areas

• Draft business cases for promising services

• Develop a roadmap and recommendations for Galileo usage by telcos

Activities related to the second call for Galileo applications, which is expected soon, will clearly profit from the results of this study.

For more information contact: Christian Hellwig, hellwig@eurescom.de 

TRAWIS – Traffic Models for the New Wireless Services (P1443)

Mobile wireless services are quickly evolving. As wireless infrastructures are deployed, the rapid adoption of multimedia messaging and interactive services will have a heavy impact on traffic usage patterns. Services such as real-time multimedia messaging, video streaming and conversational services with rich-video content are expected to rise in popularity. From a traffic perspective these services tend to exhibit a peaky and highly correlated behaviour. This leads to worse-than-planned network performance, increasing the possibility of bottlenecks.

This study will examine the requirements of new traffic models for these new services. Such models will incorporate descriptions of different traffic types, likely customer behaviour, and service requirements that would influence traffic.

The following questions will be addressed:

• What will the next generation of wireless traffic look like?

• What level of Quality of Service will be required, and what will be the impact on the network?

• What are the requirements for devising a model for this type of traffic?

The output of the ongoing Eurescom Project P1112 “New Dimensions” will be considered.

For more information contact: Christian Hellwig, hellwig@eurescom.de 

NGN Signalling with ENUM (P1444)

ENUM is a widely accepted standard, jointly developed by IETF and ITU-T in order to establish an international standard for the enhanced usage of the Domain Name System (DNS). ENUM supports the provision of new services in converged voice-data networks, the so-called Next Generation Networks (NGNs), and thus forms a key element particularly important for operators. ENUM promises to be a simple solution to address new services, optimise signal routing and to improve the interoperability between the fixed-line and the IP-based network.

ENUM, as a standardised technology, offers solutions for many known problems within an NGN. It provides mechanism for the mapping of E.164 telephone numbers into URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) and thereby enables new service features within an IP based network. The deployment of ENUM will support the smooth migration of service discovery and signalling functions from the existing SS7 databases and protocol mechanisms to an ENUM based NGN.

ENUM is currently being trialled in different countries, some of them very close to conclusion. It is necessary that operators take a step back, review all these efforts and the lessons learned, and assess the strategic impact of ENUM on their networks.

For more information contact: Adam Kapovits, kapovits@eurescom.de 

OSS for NGN – Coordination of Telco Activities (P1445)

The operations support system (OSS) is a critical business success factor of today’s telecom operators and service providers. In addition, OSS can be a key differentiator among competitive players. During the last years, the industry stakeholders have started to realise the vision of next generation networks (NGN), which will be an ongoing process for the next decades. However, for the establishment of NGNs there exists a substantial challenge to build an appropriate architecture for operation, administration and maintenance of future networks.

The main motivation for this study is to improve the non-competitive cooperation of telecom operators in standardization bodies, initiatives, projects, or towards vendors in the context of network and service management systems. The identification of the major issues in this large area will help to advance the work in a coordinated and therefore cost effective way. Besides, the work will help in finding a consensus view on the main issues.

The study will assess the current situation and will provide recommendations for actions. In particular, it will:

• Evaluate the OSS for NGN topics, players, and their activities

•  Identify overlapping or non-relevant activities as well as unconsidered topics

• Derive recommendations for action in order to coordinate and advance activities, e.g. bundle activities to bear increased influence, initiate new activities, etc.

• Propose a mechanism to keep the coordination and concerted activities running after the end of the study

For more information contact: Anastasius Gavras, gavras@eurescom.de
 

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