Page 540 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Organization and Governance 4-71

BSS Product Suites
Billing Customer Revenue E-Commerce Service Settlements
Postpaid Prepaid IP Care Collection Management

MESSAGE BUS

Service Activation CDRs
Network Performance Service Provisioning IPDRs
Mediation

Wireless Internet Wireless Services IP PSTN SS7

UMTS GPRS LMDS NMS AMPS CDMA WLL Cable SAT SMS PSTN IP-DATA GSM

FIGu RE 4.4.7 Multiservice mediation platform.
service provider. In order for this to occur, the mediation platform must contain rules that trigger
these after-the-fact transactions. The concept of a mediation platform as opposed to mediation systems
becomes critical in the evolution of OSSs for new service portfolios.
Individual mediation systems targeted on specific services or network elements can support a high
volume of transactions and the associated data processing activities. However, they still cannot perform
the correlation activities that are required to enable automated SLA and QoS programs without addi-
tional systems in the OSS.
The convergence of multiple services—voice, data, and video—is driving the need for new mediation
tools as it increases the importance of mediation with Operations Support Systems. New mediation
requirements are created with each new service or network element that is added to the product portfo-
lio. Multiservice mediation highlights the complexities facing service providers when they evolve their
networks and OSSs to meet the challenges of new infrastructures and technologies.
Information that drives transactions in the OSS can potentially originate anywhere in the network.
In addition, these transactions can require multiple copies of a single record to be simultaneously trans-
mitted for various types of billing transactions. These transactions include traditional billing, IP con-
tent, m-commerce, and other types of billing not even considered yet.
Figure 4.4.7 shows a new view of the architecture of mediation. Key points to note in this architecture
are the increased importance in the mediation platform and the data bus, which enables the transfer of
information among the various components. Due to the potentially dynamic nature of trading partners,
the mediation layer becomes the logical point in the OSS to store and exercise business rules. It also
becomes the logical point for accounting for all of the transactions that occur because all transactions
will have had some form of treatment in this layer. This functionality is not possible without an inte-
grated multiservice mediation platform.
Mediation systems can also drive downstream events, such as product and service delivery. They
must be capable of recognizing and acting upon transactions that drive multiple events and provide
records to each operation or trading partner that needs this information.
Determination of metrics that are expected to be supervised:
• Availability (multiple TMN layers)
• Delays and latencies (network and element layers)