The liberalisation of the telecommunications industry has resulted in a proliferation of new services and services providers. This is particularly the case in the rapidly expanding IP-based services market. Providers include Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Virtual Private Network (VPN), communication (backbone operators), and application service providers. The final service set delivered to the customer enduser will result from the combination of these service offerings. From a service usage accounting perspective, this new environment creates a number of important challenges, which did not apply in the traditional monopolistic telecommunications environment. The first issue is that of multiple administrative domains from the customer and service provider side and the second issue concerns applying customer Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Quality of Service (QoS). This paper addresses the issue of settlement of service usage charging across several service providers when they collectively provide application, information, or communication service to a customer. The issue at the stake is to develop standardised mechanisms that allow various business and operation support systems operating in various domains to exchange service usage information. The work presented in this paper focuses on the development of a business-tobusiness (B2B) service provisioning and management architecture to provide guidance to international organisations on the development of a federated accounting management solution. This architecture aims to be both open and adaptable and draws requirements from standardisation work going on in TMForum (TeleManagement Forum), IPDR (IP Detail Record),
The ACTS project PROSPECT is investigating the integrated management of a variety of services in a multi-domain tete-education environment. In the project's second trial the focus is on support for mobile students and teachers, enabling them to access and use advanced multimedia services from locations other than their home base. A Personal Communication System (PCS) is being defined that can support mobile user requirements in such a tele-education environment. Support for mobility has several implications for management. The management systems of multiple organisations need to co-operate to support the provision of tele-educational services to mobile students and teachers with the particular features required by the users. Specific PCS management issues are concerned with user profile management and management of user access to their customised working environment. The question of how to account and charge for resource usage when services can be used in domains other than the user's home domain must be considered, as must the requirements for security when crossing multiple domains. The PCS-specific management functions fall into three different categories. First, providing loc~ity-independent access to a service, second, customising access and use of services from different locations for individual users, and third dealing with charges caused by service usage from external domains. Many of the current architectural concepts available today are not sufficient for modelling the management of personal communication systems in a multi-domain environment. The PCS is therefore enhancing these concepts to provide for the management of student and teacher mobility in the PROSPECT context.
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