PDF of this tutorialWithin the traditional telecommunications environment, telecommunications companies acted both as network operators and service providers. The network operator is the entity that owns and operates the network infrastructure. A service provider is an entity that offers services to the subscribers. The service provider uses the network infrastructure of a network operator to deliver the service to the subscriber but is responsible for the management and development of the service.
Service offerings were more likely driven by technological availability rather than customer need, as much of the network infrastructure has been based on proprietary interfaces with bounded capabilities. This type of environment resulted in long development times and large investments to deploy services. New technological capabilities, privatization and deregulation, and changes in market and customer demand have driven the emergence of INs. The result is an increase in competition that has forced operators and services providers to add new features rapidly to attract and retain customers.
The IN can play an important role in providing such new features and services. In an intelligent network, control of call processing is moved out of the switch and into the network. The idea is to give service providers the ability to develop new services quickly, independently, and inexpensively; a capability they do not have when new services are implemented on network switches. With the IN, service providers or their IN vendors develop the intelligence or service logic to provide new services using service creation environments. Then they deploy this intelligence on service control points within the IN. So, service providers can use the facilities of the IN to deploy new services to their subscribers without any change to the programming in the network switches. By separating services from switching equipment, the IN opens markets for telecommunications-service creation and switching-equipment providers.
