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ABSTRACT
Wireless telecommunications can be divided into two broad categories: mobile communications and fixed wireless communications. The mobile communications market requires mobility or non-tethered communications. The goal of mobility is anytime, anywhere communications. Mobile communications technology must be able to allow roaming - the ability to provide service to a mobile phone users while outside their home system. On the other hand, fixed wireless is simply an alternative to wired communications.
The intelligent network (IN) is an architectural concept that enables the real-time execution of network services and customer applications in a distributed environment consisting of interconnected computers and switching systems. Thus the operator services are automated in INs. These automated services provide directory assistance and is used to provide telephone numbers, addressing information, and so on to the customer. While there are various proprietary-based mobile intelligent network (IN) technologies, the standards based technologies are often of most value to the mobile network operator and their customers. These standards based technologies are referred to as Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN). Wireless Intelligent network is developed to drive intelligent network capabilities such as service independence, separation of basic switching functions from service and application functions and independence of applications from lower-level communication details into wireless networks. The primary weapon for empowering providers to deliver distinctive services with enhanced flexibility is Wireless Intelligent Networks (WINs).
1. WIRELESS INTELLIGENT NETWORK
1.1 DEFINITION
Wireless intelligent network (WIN) is a concept being developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) Standards Committee TR45.2. The WIN standards protocol enables a graceful evolution to an IN without making current network infrastructure obsolete.
Service differentiation and streamlined infrastructure are key factors to winning the battle of competition as customers expand and become more sophisticated and the wireless service becomes more of a commodity. To wireless carriers and service providers, this means leveraging equipment, systems and customer service initiatives across all services and markets. Wireless providers who are first-to-market with customers-oriented services will have an immense advantage in securing dominant market share. One of the vital solutions for this highly competitive and increasingly demanding market is to build a sophisticated Wireless Intelligent Network infrastructure that can flexibly support existing and new services. This approach can reduce the load on the wireless switches.
The Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN) intends to take advantage of the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) concepts and products developed from wireline communications. However, progress of the AIN deployment has been slow due to the many barriers that exist in the traditional wireline carriers’ deployment procedures and infrastructure. The success of AIN has not been truly demonstrated. The AIN objectives and directions are applicable to the wireless industry although the plans and implementations could be significantly different. In order to succeed, the technology driven AIN concept has to be reinforced by the market driven WIN services. An infrastructure suitable for the WIN contains elements that are foreign to the wireline network.
WIN, borrowing the concept of AIN, is viewed to bring competitive edges in terms of:
• Mobility services beyond wireline AIN
• Reduced time for service deployment
• Multiple vendor expertise
• Increased customization
• Computerized service creation and implementation tools.
However commercial AIN services have not proven successful. There have been doubts that AIN might only theoretically address the carrier’s needs.
1.2 OVERVIEW
Today's wireless subscribers are much more sophisticated telecommunications users than they were five years ago. No longer satisfied with just completing a clear call, today's subscribers demand innovative ways to use the wireless phone. They want multiple services that allow them to handle or select incoming calls in a variety of ways.
Enhanced services are very important to wireless customers. Enhanced services will also entice potentially new subscribers to sign up for service and will drive up airtime through increased usage of PCS or cellular services. As the wireless market becomes increasingly competitive, rapid deployment of enhanced services becomes critical to a successful wireless strategy.
Intelligent network (IN) solutions have revolutionized wireline networks. Rapid creation and deployment of services has become the hallmark of a wireline network based on IN concepts. Wireless intelligent network (WIN) will bring those same successful strategies into the wireless networks.
The evolution of wireless networks to a WIN concept of service deployment delivers the following advantages, similar to the IN benefits reaped by wireline providers:
• Multivendor product offerings that foster competition
• Uniform services to subscribers across service areas
• Efficient network utilization
• Service creation and deployment
2. INTELLIGENT NETWORK
An intelligent network (IN) is a service-independent telecommunications network. That is, intelligence is taken out of the switch and placed in computer nodes that are distributed throughout the network. This provides the network operator with the means to develop and control services more efficiently. New capabilities can be rapidly introduced into the network. Once introduced, services are easily customized to meet individual customer's needs. Many of the desirable properties of the modern IN architecture are based on three major principles of independence:
1. Service independence (meaning that a wide variety of services can be composed using a set of common building blocks),
2. Separation of basic switching functions from service and application functions
3. Independence of applications from lower-level communication details.
As the IN evolves, service providers will be faced with many opportunities and challenges. While the IN provides a network capability to meet the ever-changing needs of customers, network intelligence is becoming increasingly distributed and complicated. For example, third-party service providers will be interconnecting with traditional operating company networks. Local number portability (LNP) presents many issues that can only be resolved in an IN environment to meet government mandates. Also, as competition grows with companies offering telephone services previously denied to them, the IN provides a solution to meet the challenge.
