Reports: CBOSS at the Intelligent Services in Telephone Networks, Mobile Content, Technologies and Business Conference / MForum.ru

Mforum.ru, 07.04.2005

Over the last two years the multimedia content market has outgrown its development stage, and is rapidly expanding at present, mainly in the telecom industry's mobile sector. Widening of the range of services results in offers of new VAS solutions, shaping the appearance of the mobile operators' service of the future. The present technologies for sending text messages are also being further developed in order to eliminate operation principles which do not meet present-day demands.

This and other aspects of intelligent services implementation in telecommunications were touched upon in a series of reports made by CBOSS specialists at the Intelligent Services in Telephone Networks, Mobile Content, Technologies and Business conference.

Cutting-Edge Services Based on CBOSS Convergent Solutions

The introduction of an additional node, the so-called SMS gateway, enables the distribution of messages upon their delivery at first try, while forwarding to an SMSC only those messages whose immediate delivery failed. In this case the standard message-processing algorithm is applied.

The system of immediate SMS delivery is easily integrated with the current solutions, employed by operators:

In the course of the conference the CBOSS specialists gave a specific example of the SMS gateway technology implementation: the performance of 400 SMS's per second, based on the new Intel hardware solution, was demonstrated (a similar volume of SMS traffic is reached by operators whose subscriber bases amount to 5 mln users).
In addition, the participants of the conference were introduced to the implementation of another service, based on the Intel platform, which is essential for the business processes of a present-day mobile operator, — the rating system on a prepaid basis.

The Intelligent Prepaid Platform CBOSSprepaid meets the up-to-date demands of mobile operators and service and content providers, assuring them of a means of multifunctional and flexible rating. Developed on the basis of open standards in 2001, the CBOSSprepaid product is steadily enhancing its functionality and compatibility with the switching equipment of the leading core network developers. According to the speaker, the short-range plans of CBOSS Association involve the further enhancement and development of the product's functionality, its transfer to Sun Solaris 9 and Linux RedHat 9 OS, and the implementation of new switching platforms support.

Multimedia Content Delivery: Technologies and Prospects

None of the up-to-date phone models are currently still limited to the functionality of sending text messages. Multimedia content and solutions, enabling a fault-free exchange of content between phones of different manufacturers, are on the agenda.
Although more than 90% of cell phones manufactured support MMS, the differences between phones of various manufacturers impede the promotion of MMS services on the market. In spite of the assured unification and integration with external applications and current systems (email, SMS, fax, etc.) required according to the standard, in most cases an additional adjustment of an MMS both to the functionalities of a certain phone model and the features of different external systems is required. For example:

• Converting video to animated gif (for phones without video support)


• Excluding color and transferring to another image format for fax


• Excluding SMIL for email

To solve the above, CBOSS Association has integrated a message transcoder — Media Adapter — into the CBOSSmms product, which enables the transformation of messages to adapt them to a phone's functionalities and use extra filters to:

• Enhance image quality: remove noises, enhance image brightness and contrast;


• Transform image (rotate, mirror);


• Overlay extra images:


• Flag of preview;


• Ad logotype;


• Operator's logotype;


• Digital signature.
  
  

The message-buffering mechanism of Media Adapter-а provides for transcoding at the ability level of phone models which have the same characteristics. In other words, instead of making 100000 transformations of 100000 messages sent, the number of transformations made is equal to the number of different phone models supporting MMS and registered in the network (25, on average).

The CBOSSmms solution presented incorporates an additional WAP-Gateway option, which can also be used for WAP content delivery and does not depend on CBOSSmms:

The analysis of various content delivery capabilities, made at the conference, was followed by the presentation of a new CBOSS product — Color Ring Back Tone CBOSScrbt. It is an original service, which enables subscribers to replace standard ring back tones, unavailability and «busy» notifications with user-defined sound fragments (music, voice messages, or sound effects). A sound fragment, selected by a user from the set offered by content providers, is stored in the subscriber's «personal bank» till the service is cut off or another fragment is chosen.
The rich functionalities of the new service allow an individual approach for every end user, despite the rapid growth rate of a subscriber base. As an example, the CBOSS specialists touched upon the implementation of this product in the network of the largest mobile operator in Azerbaijan, — Azercell Telecom.

The CBOSScrbt technology links carriers and content providers who offer a wide range of popular services and content delivery terms:

In this respect the CBOSS specialists presented different schemes for operators' and content providers' interaction, aimed at ensuring efficient delivery of content services to the end user.

The report was focused on certain situations, enabling one to solve possible problems arising due to:

• Usage of various non-standardized protocols by different operators;


• Complexity of transferring additional parameters while using protocols not initially supporting such data transfer;


• Imperfection of settlements systems used by operators, which causes errors at content delivery and billing.

The latest methods of providing content services, presented by CBOSS Association at the Intelligent Services in Telephone Networks, Mobile Content, Technologies and Business conference, are implemented on the basis of its own versatile platform, which:

• supports a wide variety of content types;


• manages various infotainment resources, distributing them among owners;


• links system users with external resources;


• automates business processes of content providers;


• arranges mass content delivery by various means and ensures hardware compatibility;


• integrates different interactive services (e.g., voting);


• provides for multimedia traffic rating while integrated with prepaid systems.

More than thirty VAS products of CBOSS Association are an efficient basis for providing different types of intelligent services which attract mobile and fixed network subscribers. It is one of the key directions of convergent technologies development by the Association. The first Russian SMS center CBOSSsms, the first Russian USSD server CBOSSussd, and the first Russian CAMEL Phase II enabled prepaid system all prove the unrivaled position of CBOSS among developers of IT for telecom.