A Next Generation Operator Environment to Turn Context-Aware Services into a Commercial Reality

Network operators can play an essential role in turning widely investigated context-aware services into a commercial reality. The Nokia Siemens Networks NEON project aims to develop a virtual network operator environment that can leverage the opportunities offered by packet-based multi-access networks, increasingly more powerful mobile devices, and service provider business practices to enhance the end user experience with value-added services. This paper primarily focuses on the support provided by the NEON network to fully accomplish context-aware services. We present the design and implementation of the NEON network currently in use in Nokia Siemens Networks premises with a special focus on the context services it provides. We assessed the performance of such services in terms of latency and power consumption on smart phones and we used them to implement the communication dispatcher, a prototype application that enables efficient context-aware user-to-user multi-terminal communication.