TMN management of Pan-European IN-based Freephone service

EURESCOM, the European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in Telecommunications, has launched several projects to pave the way for an homogenous and efficient management of Pan-European services, based on the TMN concepts. One key component for implementing TMN inter-PNO (public network operator) management is the definition of X interfaces. These interfaces must provide management services between PNOs, taking into account specific constraints of inter-working between different administrative domains (security requirements, inter-operability of heterogeneous platforms, competition between PNOs). The Pan-European IN-based Freephone service has been felt as a top priority service, and an ad-hoc project has been launched by EURESCOM to specify the X interface for managing this service. This interface is meant to be tested on a distributed TMN laboratory. BT, France Telecom (leader), PTT Netherlands, CSELT, Portugal Telecom, Telia, and Telecom Finland were involved in this interface specification activity that was carried out as EURESCOM project P406. This paper presents the results achieved, and focuses on the methodology used to obtain them.