Smooth migration of legacy telecom service and access network to next generation

摘要

Chinese telecommunication service operators are now facing great opportunities, challenges and commpetitions of exponentially increasing multimedia Internet services. Since legacy networks are service-specific and TDM based, it is very difficult to raise and update service and capacity on service specific network to satisfy the increasing requirements of personalized, mobile, intelligent and multimedia communication services. Thus the next generation telecommunication network has become a hot topic in telecommunication society. Fortunately, the evolution of Internet offers us many experiences in providing open, scaleable and multiple services on an IP infrastructure. Some of telecommunication services have been implemented on IP-based networks. One improtant issue telecommunication operators now concern is the cost and revenue in evolution. They hope to increase the traditional telephone service and data service to cover developing areas and meanwhile provide new services and features to the subscribers in developed provinces and metropolis in China. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of next generation network and the shortages of legacy telecommunication networks, this paper proposes a smooth migration strategy named WACOS solution for Chinese telecommunication operators. Principally, WACOS uses Internet client-server soft-switch architecture to simulate traditional telecommunication services by media gateways. WACOS has also a flexible service creation platform for developing new services and features. By WACOS, telecommunication operators could first spread their metropolitan IP-based broadband access network to supoport various access modes and services and gradually replace their existing LE and DDN node by IP media gateways and multiple service servers in developed area. These isolated access networks and service nodes have PSTN, SS7 and Internet access gateways. The next generation telecommunication network will thus grow by interconnecting the networks, gateways and servers by IP backbone.