Demand for intelligent network architecture means new market opportunities

Communications Industry Researchers Inc. (cir), a Virginia-based market research firm, has published a new report, Advanced Intelligent Networks: Opportunities in Network Control for the Coming Decade, which delves into the architecture, application, and drivers for IN concepts.

According to the report, IN is more than just network architecture; it?s a framework for the creation, provisioning, and management of advanced communications services.

cir believes isdn, a service that has yet to flourish, will benefit from the introduction of IN. For example, IN will enable complex isdn routing schemes that let a single number follow a user moving from home to office to mobile phone. Also, the local exchange carriers have leveraged IN-based features like automatic number identification and dialed number-identification services, packaging them with isdn service to drum up additional new business.

Although frame relay has not been associated with IN, cir predicts a strong move toward using switched virtual circuits, which will create innovative IN-based services at some point in the future. Additionally, frame relay remains an important technological marker on the way to true broadband networks. IN-based services created in a frame relay environment may eventually migrate to an atm/broadband-isdn environment.

As with frame relay, atm uses for IN techniques are few and far between. However, cir says atm has always been seen as the underpinning of a future broadband-isdn, which would supply very advanced services that imply some intelligent control of the network. Broadband services like movies on demand would be offered to subscribers through the telephone network controlled by a service control point in an intelligent network.

Currently, IN concepts have rarely been discussed in the context of the Internet. But given the growing importance of the Internet in electronic communications, cir believes a rethinking of the IN concept in regard to the Internet is likely to occur sooner than later.

IN architectures, once fully realized, will forever alter the structural underpinnings of the telecommunications industry, predicts cir. They effectively separate the service tier from the transport tier, theoretically leveling a century-old barrier to entry into key telecommunications markets in the process. They also make the intelligent peripheral a truly generic service platform, readily deployable by any number of telephone company or non-telephone company content providers, says cir. IN could potentially transform the public network into an open, free-form infrastructure replete with virtually any kind of service imaginable.

cir?s complete report is available for $6000 by contacting Robert Nolan at (617) 923-7611 or by email: [email protected]. u