Service Broker 2


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 example
Service Broker combining 4 services inot a single calloflow

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 broker

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.


Internet Telephony Convergence- JAINSLEE Platform

Convergence : Telephone networks and computer networks converging into single digital network using Internet standards. Components in a Network Client computer Server computer Network interfaces (NICs) Connection medium Network operating system Hub or switch Routers- Device used to route packets of data through different networks, ensuring that data sent gets to the correct address Figure :simple computer…

IMS in EPC ( Evolved Packet Core )

Packet Switched and/or Circuit swicthed Communication The earlier models were distributed between legacy circuit switched networks and evolving packet switched networks With the massive improvents in quality of network srevices packet switched comunication protocls became more resilent and replaced the circuit swicthed protcols for realtime communication. LTE ( Long Term Evolution ) LTE evolved its…

Service Broker 1

What is Service Broker ?

Service broker is a service abstraction layer between the network and application layer in  telecom environment. SB( Service Broker ) enables us to make use of existing applications and services from Intelligent Network’s SCP ( Service control Point ) , IMS’s Application Server as well as other sources  in a harmonized manner.

The Service Broker Application Server provides the services in various permutations and combinations. Examples:  Mobicents / Rhino TAs for Jainslee SBB , or Weblogic / Sailfin for Sip servlets.

What is Service Orchestration ?

The Process of Orchestrating various service to provide a single flow control is refereed to as Service Orchestration.

What is Service Harmonization  ?

I have tried to simplify the concept by visualizing different boxes of various communication platforms as SIP, HTTP , CAP 1/2/3/4 , SMTP etc and then imagining a system that caters to all of these .  It is primarily important that the billing and chagrining system remains common to all the sources and protocols be it 2G , 3G or 4G based. A post on service harmonization between various telecom generations is at

Service Harmonization between generations of telecom

service harmonization3

The next writeup Service broker 2 is :

Service Broker 2

This contains the Defination and purpose of using a Service broker as well as its role in network enviornment. It also contains service broker functions like Real-Time Charging , Protocol/Call Flow Management/Call Screening Management , Subscriber Data Management Interaction, Media Resource Brokering.

Details of Service Broker implementation in IN and IMS is at article below. Details on Service Broker and how service provider acts as a central Node for Services invocation and services composition is described in this. It clearly shows Service Broker provides Services Orchestration / Interaction, service development, third party integration and acts as a protocol gateway.


OTT ( Over the Top ) Communication applications

Market trends are not in favour of Telecom Service /providers with increasing use of OTT ( Over The Top ) applications like WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Google hangouts, skype, Viber, etc. OTT applications are often blamed to take a stake in voice traffic revenue by using IP calls where the telco could’ve charged based on its…

Harmonization of services between generations of telecommunication core layers

A communication system can be made up of many components which are individually undergoing evolution such as access layer generations, and core layer upgrades. Harmonized and uniform open standard-based service delivery platforms over legacy Proprietary codebase is the preferred choice for most service providers to save the investment in their infrastructure and programming while keeping…

SIP Presence

We have already learned about Sip user agent and sip network server. SIP clients initiates a call and SIP server routes the call . Registrar is responsible for name resolution and user location. Sip proxy receives calls and send it to its destination or next hop. Presence is user’s reachability and willingness to communicate its…

Legacy Telecom Networks

I use the term legacy telecom system many a times , but have not really described what a legacy system actually is . In my conferences too I am asked to just exactly define a legacy system . Often my clients are surprised to hear what they have in current operation is actually fitted in…

SIP/VOIP transformation towards IMS (Total IP)

The telecommunications industry has been going through a significant transformation over the past few years. At the outset incumbent operators used to focus on mainly basic voice services and still remained profitable due to the limited number of players in the space and requirement of huge amounts as initial investment. However, with the advent of…

IMSSF and RIMSSF

This post particularly describes the gateways in IMS which communication back and forth with a legacy endpoints.To get a overview of IMS itself click here  and to get a detailed description of IMS and its architecture click here . What is IM-SSF  ? IP Multimedia Service Switching Function is a  gateway to provide IN service such…

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)

Why IMS ? What benefits does IMS bring ? Features of IMS Network IMS Layers Transport / Media Endpoint Layer Backhaul network Border Gateways Session & Control Layer HSS (Home Subscriber Server) SCF (Call Session Control Function) MGw (Media Gateway Control Function) Application Services Layer TAS (Telephony Application Server) IM-SSF ( IP Multimedia Services Switching…

Telecommunications convergence – VoIP, PBX and IMS

The signalling protocols migration like from signalling system 7 (SS7) to session initial protocol (SIP) have been taking place in Telco-Industry. Similarly nodes of legacy network like signal transfer point (STP) of legacy network are being migrated to call session control function (CSCF) of IMS that allows the rapid development and deployment of enhanced, revenue-generating…