The use of conceptual models during the design of new telecommunication services

The increasing demand for new telecommunication services encourages service providers to extend their service offerings. However, the development of such services and their deployment on the public network are non-trivial tasks. Experience has shown that the use of conceptual models can assist in the development of new systems. This paper investigates the usefulness of conceptual models containing information on the telecommunications domain and development process models, during the development of new telecommunication services. After an introduction to conceptual models, telecommunication services and requirements engineering, informal, semi-formal and formal conceptual models are discussed. Then Telos, an object-oriented knowledge-representation language that is well suited for conceptual modeling, is introduced. Some examples of the application and integration of informal, semi-formal and formal conceptual models in the Requirements Assistant for Telecommunication Services (RATS) are given.