to pay for it) has been waning. The Internet further changed the game.

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1 As the old telephone business models break down and new service paradigm takes over, communication companies must combine voice with the new services of the network. The SCI-Platform (Service Convergence Integrated Platform) is a solution for broadband communication and media services. Driven by field proven technology, the SCI-Platform delivers revenue from day one. The telecom industry is changing and has been for a long time. Originally built to provide voice services to the end customers, the global telephone network has grown to an unparalleled scale. It is a unique system that connects people in every corner of the world and is undeniably successful at what it does. The problem is that communication network needs changed and the telephone network has not been able to successfully keep up with the necessary change. For a long time now, the importance of voice as a service (along with willingness to pay for it) has been waning. The Internet further changed the game. Traditional telephone networks are based on closed and proprietary standards. Voice is the centre of the service offering with few other services, in part because of the complexity of building new services and the underlying network infrastructure. On the other hand, the Internet is built with open protocols and is designed to be able to cope with the best effort network service. This approach has been remarkably successful, especially in allowing new services to be deployed quickly. All businesses were touched by its culture of innovation, lowering the traditional boundaries of business. Internet-based technologies such as IP and Ethernet have revolutionized the data services, and as a result these open technologies lowered the boundaries further. In order to respond to the new challenges and competition in the telecommunication world and to allow telecommunications and information networks to come together, the industry has designed a new network architecture that takes the best of telecom and IP networks and brings them together. The name of this network is the Next Generation Network (NGN). NGN is an open, standardized platform that is designed to deliver all traffic types over a single physical network.

2 The standards for NGN are developed in bodies such as ETSI, TISPAN, 3GPP and ATIS. NGN tackles some of the major issues facing the telecom industry today: How to migrate from Fixed-line telephony to IPbased telephony How to merge fixed and mobile services (FMC) How to deliver exciting new bundles of services such as a Triple play" (telephony, Internet and video services) How to expand non-traffic business such as e- commerce and content distribution How to do all of the above cost effectively provide new services faster and at a lower budget with NGN. NGN both simplifies and enriches the user experience. By separating the service layer from the network, services can be created with the customers needs being placed first rather than letting them be shaped by network functionality. Convergence The convergence in the service and network layers brings together many services that have traditionally been separated for technological reasons. NGN unifies the user device and/or identity, so that one identity can be used across all devices and all access networks. Operators have a number of expectations from NGN. NGN is a fundamental change to their business and operations. This change would only be undertaken if it delivers very real benefits: Create New Revenues NGN unites the fractured service provisioning of current networks and frees services from network restrictions. With NGN, operators can offer to their users multimedia communication services, on a dependable and secure network. Reduce Costs Conventional telephone networks have required heavy investment in equipment (CAPEX) and operations (OPEX). NGN equipment is based on the universal transport protocol IP and similar open technologies that help to reduce CAPEX significantly. Faster Service Deployment In NGN, the service layer is separated from the transport layer, and this enables the use of a third party developed service application. The telecom operator will be able to Enriched Service NGN enriches the user experience with new services. Voice is combined with new media and multimedia and triple play will be the new defacto service standard. Videophone, Presence and services like instant messaging will be the new building blocks of a new range of services. Further, the opening of the service enablers to third party developers means that more services are created and deployed to the end users.

3 Trusted, Dependable Environment The NGN experience will be enabled in a trusted and secure environment that will encourage a wider use of services and payments without compromising privacy. approaches. These approaches are not exclusive of each other (in fact they can be complimentary). Convergence of fixed, mobile, broadcast and IP networks offers more than a few challenges. Even with the standards for NGN, rolling everything together will be a large undertaking. It will not happen overnight but rather in a number of stages. The end point of NGN migration will be a full deployment of a network that is compliant with 3GPP/TISPAN standards and the establishment of the structures and operations capable of supporting this network. The initial stages of NGN are harder to pin down because not every operator will start from exactly the same point. But, we can see now that first stages will include the deployment of new transport and access networks (e.g. broadband technologies such as 3G and xdsl), then the gradual deployment of NGN functionality, for example the service applications and SDP. The shift of voice-centric services to packet switched networks will accelerate with the deployment of NGN access networks. As it has been seen in many markets already, faster access networks speed the growth of the data traffic and this in turn becomes the tipping point for operators to shift investment from circuit-switched network investment to packet switched network investment. Beyond the initial switch in direction, different scenarios exist for NGN migration. Depending on the operators management strategy and network structure the route to NGN could be quite different but in the next section we would like to introduce two general migration main focus of Legacy Network Replacement is the removal of TDM switching technology and their replacement with soft switches. IP based Softswitches, when successfully deployed, have a smaller footprint than their predecessors and are cheaper to maintain. While cutting costs is a main priority with soft switch deployment, it is not expected that this will be done with the loss of any services. A successful soft switch migration will provide all legacy voice call services with no difference in service discernible to end users. When complete, the introduction of IP to the backbone and to the network will be a major step forward to the all-ip network of NGN. Pros of Legacy Network Replacement: Smooth shift of legacy services from proprietary technologies to IP based open technologies Reduction in operation and maintenance (Potential) Cons of Legacy Network Replacement TDM networks are so feature rich that the cost of realizing all legacy PSTN services on soft switches can be very high. (Therefore, some TDM switches may have to remain or some services be discontinued.) The focus of softswitches is cost savings. There is little value added beyond this and against a background of falling voice revenues, justifying the investment can be an issue. service migration is more organic than legacy network replacement. From the very start of data

4 services, users have always wanted faster connection speeds. As soon as access speeds rise, network traffic grows. Bandwidth has always been both a catalyst and bottleneck to service growth. The rapid growth of adsl and optical fibre lines is connecting a larger number of users to richer services everyday. With the current multi-megabit broadband speeds a large number of real-time services are viable. Some operators are now looking at one approach or the other, but NEC expects that many will take an approach that balances both approaches against their needs. In the next section we will present our solution (SCI- Platform) for Broadband Service Migration. In order to enable new services and capture new revenues there will have to be investment in the new broadband access networks. This may be as an addition of functionality to the copper network (e.g., adsl) or it maybe as a separate network (e.g. Wi-Fi, Wi-MAX or optical fibre). The advantage of the more organic approach of broadband service migration is that new revenues for access and services can offset the initial network investment. Broadband networks bring to end users a large number of services. The most profitable approach to broadband has come from the bundling of services with high speed access. In most cases these broadband service bundles include voice and telephony services. When the service provision is made with a SIP server, users can enjoy bundles of multimedia services, such as VoIP, presence, messaging and video streaming. It is possible for broadband telephone services to replace legacy services. They can also be offered as a second line. Either way, by reducing traffic on the TDM switches this approach can extend the life of the TDM network and reduce the need to take an intermediately step such as soft switches. While full scale NGN is a longer term vision, the migration of networks is already underway. Convergence and deployment of the NGN access are the first steps that have been taken and this is enabling new services and revenues to be developed by operators. To recap, there are two non-exclusive approaches to NGN network migration: Legacy Network Migration and Broadband Service Migration. broadband service migration is called the SCI-Platform. The SCI-Platform is a SIP based solution for end-to-end broadband IP telephony and multimedia services. Supporting voice and media services, it is compact and powerful, so it can be deployed with a small system configuration but can rapidly scale with traffic and subscriber growth. The SCI-Platform is an all-in-one solution for IP communication and media services over broadband. The solution consists of a SIP server, application servers and O&M servers. The SCI-Platform is based on the successful range of SIP server that has dominated the Japanese VOIP market since its launch in 2000.

5 The SCI-Platform is a product designed to allow operators to leverage their investment in VoIP and BB services that will follow very closely the take up of adsl and other NGN access services. Roll out of adsl up to now has been characterized by a slow start followed by frenetic growth and expansion before maturing. The SCI-Platform is designed to suit this market characteristic. Its small start approach means new businesses can be invested in quickly, with less risk, but scale up quickly when the market expands. The blade server architecture means investment is made without waste - only where and when it is needed. The SCI-Platform is a SIP server solution. It is not designed to replicate legacy telephony services. Rather its focus is on providing core voice services in combination with other media services. In this way, SCI-Platform supports operators transition from offering voice centric service solutions, for which their networks are optimised, to a next generation service offering which has IP voice services offered as one of many services. This transition lies at the heart of NGN migration and the SCI-Platform has been designed to roll out these combination services. It is a powerful SIP server, but also has applications such as Web services, video services, messaging and presence. The SCI- Platform is a new product for the new era of broadband combinational media services. SIP server Implemented on carrier class blade system Supports the IETF based SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) Application servers Implemented on carrier class blade system. Co-operates with the SIP server to provide various subscriber services. Moreover, different services provided by multiple application servers can be combined to create a new service, which can generate new business opportunities. O&M server Implements the basic O&M functions such as subscriber management, operation management and charging mediation. Via an external connection interface, interconnect with the existing platform monitoring system or charging system. (Optional) The SCI-Platform uses the HP BladeSystem for its SIP server and application servers. The advantages of adopting the BladeSystem are as follows: Flexible structure change By insertion and removal of blades, flexible configuration change according to the system s usage rate is possible. Planning a suitable expansion schedule will improve the efficiency of CAPEX. High reliability by redundant configuration Blades for the SCI-Platform are in redundant in an Active-Standby configuration, to realize carrier class reliability. Centralized management of multiple functions Integrating multiple functions into one enclosure streamlines the O&M work and contributes to the improvement of system availability. The enclosure is of 10U high, and it can hold up to 16 server blades.

6 on the enclosure as server blades. AS-DB is connected to the blade system as an external device. Presence Application Server manages the presence information of subscribers and objects to provide the presence service to the subscribers. In addition to presence server functions, PR-AS also provides XDMS (XML Database Management Server) functions. The SCI-Platform applications are a range of software which provides functions for SIP server and various application servers. For standard configuration, SIP sever, Media Resource Application server (MR-AS), Call Control Application server (CC-AS), Web Service Gateway (WS-GW) and Application Subscriber Database (AS-DB) are included. Messaging Application Server provides the messaging services such as the chat-room and Instant Messages. The messages are sent after automatic conversion, according to the environment of the receiver. the SIP functions such as subscriber registration, authentication and routing. Media Resource Application Server (IVR) cooperates with the SIP server to provide IVR (Interactive Voice Response) services as an IVR server. Also provides various multimedia services such as Voice Mail and Multimedia Conference. Call Control Application Server provides the session control functions such as session initiation, termination and modification. Each control function is provided as a Java/XML API. Web Service Gateway provides the connection service functions as SOAP/XML-based Web service API. The API conforms to the industry standard Parlay X. Application Subscriber Database provides common database for application servers to manage application and subscriber information. AS-DB consists of the server part and database part. AS-DB Server is installed

7 Convergence and NGN deployment is one of the most important trends within the telecommunications industry at the moment. It presents challenges and opportunities in equal measure. Convergence and NGN will affect an operator s business in every area and at every level. Two major approaches to NGN migration are Legacy Network Replacement, which focuses on the replacement of PSTN by an all-ip network, and the Broadband Service Evolution, which focuses on providing broadband access and multimedia services (such as VoIP, presence and video streaming). Which approach is best suited to an operator depends on their network profiles and the type of end-users they serve. For the end-users to feel a difference in the new network (and pay to use it), new and attractive services must be delivered on a regular basis. Therefore, the deployment of NGN should focus not only on PSTN replacement but also on the provision of new services. NEC has developed the SCI-Platform to fulfill this need. The SCI-Platform is an all-in-one solution, which consists of a SIP server, application servers and an O&M server. It enables the operator to quickly start the VoIP and multimedia services on their networks. NGN, operators will have to work very closely with a vendor or vendors such as NEC that have knowledge and experience across the entire range of technologies and industries that NGN will touch upon.