Providing broadband services with IN

Deregulation and Internet are shaping the future of (tele-)communications. Deregulation has led to new operators entering competition with traditional PTTs. It will also bring in some new players with an infrastructure that can be converted to provide telecommunication services, e.g. cable TV vendors are seeking the possibility to upgrade their coax distribution network in order to provide interactive communication services. The extremely fast growth of Internet has opened opportunity for the introduction of bandwidth demanding applications. In order to survive, telecommunication network operators will have to provide more advanced services in a cost-effective way. A cost-effective service provisioning can be achieved, e.g., by making use, to the largest possible extent, the existing telecom infrastructure. Advanced broadband services are characterized by high-demand for transmission bandwidth, as well as the need for a sophisticated control of the service provisioning. Most of the network backbones have been upgraded to optical network. Access techniques such as asynchronous digital subscriber line (ADSL) are readily available to allow up to a few Mbits per second downstream data transmission, together with a reasonably large upstream data transmission (up to more than 100 Kbits per second), transmission capacity does not seem to be the bottleneck, at least in the near future. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the control of service provisioning in such an environment. While the work in B-ISDN can be considered as a long term solution for years beyond 2010, an evolutionary approach is needed before that, taking into account how fast Internet applications, in particular world wide web, are growing. This paper discusses how IN concept can be used in the provisioning control of advanced broadband services.