• Purpose of Service Broker
• Service Brokering role in network environment
• Functions of a Service Broker

Telecom Service Broking supplements value-added telecom services ( VAS) by blending several existing services. For example Call Screening with Find me follow me service, or Call Forwarding with Voice Mail etc, or a logical combination of all of them.

Service Broker is part of a unified platform for allowing carriers, mobile operators, and cable operators to rapidly create, manage, and deliver converged video, voice, and data service bundles across multiple networks and devices. Service Broker works as mediator layer between Network Environment and Application environment layer. It manage the new services, existing  services  & combine them with each other in loose coupling. I have defined Service Broker , Service Harmonization and Servic orchestration here – Service Broker 1

https://telecom.altanai.com/2013/03/19/service-broker/

Purpose of Service Broker

Service brokering purpose to  efficiently  manage the service interaction and service composition for application logic in any network environment.

The detailed study and architectural representation of Service Broker implementation in IN and IMS is at –

It contains detailed and full fleshed architecture diagrams of Service Broker and how service provider acts as a central Node for Services invocation and services composition. It clearly shows Service Broker provides Services Orchestration / Interaction , service development, third party integration and acts like a protocol gateway .

Service Brokering role in network environment

Today’s voice services are predominantly delivered via Service Control Points (SCP) or Intelligent Network (IN) Application Servers that rely on IN protocols (such as INAP and CAMEL) for complex call control. Those services tend to be highly stable and profitable and also highly customized, and are therefore not easily moved to SIP-based application servers.

Recreating the functionality of deployed IN-based applications requires a exhaustive survey, documentation, and duplication of used features and capabilities, a task that may not be easily achieved. CSPs will need to deliver these same services (down to feature sets and even quirky behavior) on LTE subscribers to ensure migrated users have the same level of service and experience.

As CSPs evolve their networks for LTE, the resulting networks present tremendous challenges in voice services and application delivery.  Realizing this opportunity, the telecom software industry has come forward with a purpose-built network element: the Service Broker, a solution specifically designed to overcome network architecture challenges and ensure voice service delivery from any network domain to any other network domain.

Service Brokers are placed between the application layer and the control layer, with the purpose of delivering and extending the reach of applications to all network domains of the CSP. They do this by performing the signaling, media and call control interworking between the applications and different network domains. Implicit in the successful deployment of service brokers is the capability of delivering the required interworking without necessitating changes to either the applications or the networks.

Functions of a Service Broker

Service Brokers provide many functionality. Among them the most often delivered features are:

• IMS Service Broker
• IN-IN Trigger Management
• Real-Time Charging
• Protocol/Call Flow Management/Call Screening Management
• Subscriber Data Management Interaction
• Media Resource Brokering
• Service Orchestration

The Service Broker’s ability to perform orchestration and combination of discrete voice applications and services into new combined offerings (voice mash-ups) is particularly exciting. With this capability CSPs are able of creating new revenue-producing offers to subscribers where they previously were not available: CRBT ( Ring Back Tome ) and Pre Paid, Find Me / Follow Me combined with Voice VPNs, etc.

Service Brokers also provide the capability of generating Real-Time Charging events, either programmatically (via an API) or automatically as part of service delivery. The challenge facing CPSs is delivering new, innovative services that seamlessly integrate into existing billing platforms. Doing so often means normalizing charging events or even transforming charging events from one technology to another, as is the case in IN to IMS migration.

In conclusion, the Service Broker is responsible for orchestrating and delivering combinational services and generating a charging event upon successful start/completion of those enhanced services.

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