On the impacts of intelligent agent concepts on future telecommunication environments

Abstract

The telecommunications environment is changing its face towards an open market of services where the vision is (access to) “information any time, any place, in any form”. Mobility, service personalization and interoperability of services represent fundamental aspects of this environment. In this context a new paradigm is gaining momentum, referred to as “Intelligent Agents”. Unfortunately the term “Intelligent Agent” has become a buzzword and is used in many different contexts. Therefore, this paper provides an overview of the emerging field of Intelligent Agents (IAs) by categorizing the existing types of IAs and identifying their fundamental properties. In addition, the paper identifies potential application areas of IA concepts in the telecommunication environment, focusing on intelligent communications and management, where also the relationships to existing key concepts, such as Intelligent Networks, Telecommunication Management Network and TINA will be addressed

Agents skills and their roles in mobile computing and personal communications

“…However, agent technology is considered as an emerging technology in this domain. The driving force for this view is the assumption that agents will provide better support for distribution of control and management in telecommunication systems in general {Magedanz, 1995a, Magedanz 1996b. This is due to the fact that the agent concept can be seen as an evolution step beyond the object-oriented paradigm, since agents enhance objects by distributing control and goals to them.…”