International Voice Services: Platform Evolution and Management Achievements

This paper addresses the original path, among Tier-1 wholesalers, carried out by Telecom Italia Sparkle in order to completely migrate from a traditional TDM-based platform to a fully IP infrastructure integrated both at the transport layer and the service layer. Focusing on the voice platform and the related OSS/BSS systems, the paper discusses on how (design criteria and achievements) the TIS integrated architecture has been implemented and its relationship with the Least Cost Routing system and describes the achieved results from the technical (e.g. decommissioning in 2005 all TDM switches, first among its peers) as well as business perspective (e.g. the achieved drop in the unitary cap.ex. and op.ex.). The paper ends presenting the guidelines TIS intends to follow for the forthcoming migration from a voice platform to multiservice one exploiting elements of an IMS-oriented architecture.