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AIN Futures

The future of the AIN, as defined by Bellcore, is a bit uncertain. GTE and each of the RBOCs and IXCs have developed their own versions of IN in support of 800 services, calling card verification, and other services. Whether they will move toward the Bellcore standard version is not clear, although it appears to be unlikely. AINs will be implemented across the major carriers; in fact, they already have been deployed in part. As AIN capabilities roll out on a gradual basis, we likely never will see headlines announcing the arrival of AIN. Rather, it has crept into the networks and will continue to do so. Driving forces for the continuing rollout of such capabilities include recent FCC (May 4, 1995) and state PUC decisions in support of Caller ID and Name ID, which require SS7 and some level of AIN. A number of carriers have begun to offer automated Directory Assistance, and that trend is likely to continue. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 introduced local competition and several states have taken the initiative of requiring local number portability and equal access at a local exchange level—AINs are key to implementing such flexibility.

More exotic AIN functionality is illustrated in Figure 11.13, involving a reservation system taking advantage of processing power embedded in the network—the following approximate scenario has been followed in several cases. A hotel reservation network might involve incoming call centers in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. These call centers are networked through AT&T so that callers might be directed to the closest call center that can handle the call based on criteria such as queue length, average holding time, and priority level of the caller as determined by Caller ID or PIN number. In cooperation with a third-party vendor, the hotel company might write a generic software program to accomplish the routing of calls. That program would enable inquiries against a relational database in which resides customer profiles in order that calls might be handled in the most appropriate way. The program and database might reside on a centralized computer platform located in the Chicago call center, in the data center of the third party vendor, or perhaps even in the carrier’s wire center. The centralized network control and routing system would make frequent status checks against the individual ACDs in the call centers in order to determine traffic load and make performance comparisons against Quality of Service parameters, which are user-definable. Based on this process, each call would be routed in the most effective manner. Once this system is deployed and performing effectively, it could be made available on a licensed basis to other hotel chains, rental car agencies, and other reservation networks. Each licensed user then might have similar capabilities, with the system administrator remotely accessing a physical and logical partition of the programmed logic and database in order to support his own reservation network supported by MCI, Sprint, or LDDS Worldcom. Through the development of such a scenario, multiple users take advantage of computer and database technologies embedded in the carrier network, and supporting multiple reservation networks. The interaction between the carriers takes place over SS7 links.

The types of services described above don’t necessarily require broadband networks to support them, although broadband is always good. For that matter and in this world oriented toward instant gratification, more is always better and faster is better, still. Broadband networks certainly fill that need with more bandwidth which supports faster communications. Into the future, the true potential of AINs will be realized only over broadband networks that will be ATM-based, SS7-supported and multimedia-ready. For example, the Digital 800 services were discussed in Chapter 8 under the heading Conventional Public Data Networks. Although Digital 800 currently makes of conventional circuit-switched digital networks, the service is far from conventional. Through the application of network intelligence, ultimately in the form of AINs, the routing of the voice, data, image and video calls are accomplished. AINs will add the ability to switch the calls between carrier networks, in the unlikely event that the carriers are willing to do so. Broadband networks will add the performance characteristics so necessary in effectively supporting such bandwidth-intensive communications.


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