Potential Future Applications of Direct, Automated Service Activation
Mike Ahrens
Technology Resources
Southwestern Bell Corporation
550 Maryville Center Drive, Suite 300
St. Louis, Missouri 63141
Abstract
There is budding interest among telecommunications network and
service providers in allowing subscribers to activate their telecommunications
services by directly interacting with a fully automated service activation
process. This capability facilitates both service turn-up for new customers and
service addition for existing customers. Direct, automated service activation
(DASA) is enabled by remote management of service attributes, which is governed
by input from a variety of possible customer access channels. Some of the
most promising direct input channels, beyond DTMF (dual-tone multi-frequency)
keypad signaling, include centrally located video kiosks, portable analog
display sets, and in-home video monitors. Another significant enabler for direct,
automated activation is re-engineering key aspects for the existing service
activation architecture. Three possible functional architectures for a DASA
application, each progressively more complex, are outlined. For any of these
architectures, re-engineering must focus on several important aspects, such as the
flexible sequencing of processing steps and closer alignment between network and
administrative data.
Keywords: Service activation; service offerings; re-engineering.
JNSM: Vol. 1, No. 1, 1993
Potential Future Applications of Direct, Automated Service Activation [Vol. 1, No. 1, 1993]
NOTE: only abstract of paper available on-line
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