Welcome to NGNM 2008
The fixed mobile convergence of telecommunication networks along with the telecom-IP network convergence have opened up prospects for a rich ecosystem of IP-based next generation converged network technologies and applications. Emergence of principles and practices like Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0, along with gradual adoption of industry standards like the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and Java API for Internetworking (JAIN) is making this convergence possible. The challenges to the operators are to provide suitable interfaces to an increasingly complex and heterogeneous underlying wireless access landscape, typically consisting of cellular (e.g., UMTS, LTE, etc.), metropolitan area (e.g., WiMAX) and short range (e.g., WiFi) systems. Future telecom service providers, on the other hand, are expected to stem from the fact that a converged network needs to carry a multitude of high-bandwidth triple-play (voice, video and data) services over a single network that is much more distributed, multipoint, diverse, and interactive in nature. End users will interact with the network via sophisticated devices, and be able to select from a wide range of Quality-of-Service (QoS) options. To cater to these emerging service paradigms, network intelligence has to address several aspects including multimedia session management, coordination of multi-protocol connections, advanced security, etc. Multimedia content delivery over the Internet has been extensively researched. However, the related engineering problem is evolving into the problem of how to dynamically create content distribution infrastructures and services in the context of telco provider managed networks. To stay ahead in the competition and provide market leading offerings, carriers further need to enable a global ecosystem of third-party independent application developers to deliver converged services leveraging open standards-based service delivery platform. Finally, to establish a common architecture for the convergence among services and networks, standards and frameworks will be required to ensure the interoperability of networks and applications, and facilitate best utilization of the existing telecommunications infrastructure within the converged ecosystem.
