There is reason to assume that network operators do not fully understand the immediacy of this potential threat to subscriber revenue. On the other hand it seems that Web 2.0 service providers understand the opportunity here and actively foster it, too.

What are the implications on technology?

In order to quickly introduce next generation services, network operators need an open, robust, and flexible IT and network infrastructure in order to easily integrate with third party applications and to quickly introduce new services with minimum costs. 

Here, IMS architectures are becoming a key enabler for both fixed and mobile network operators to provide the next generation network architecture. The IMS allows blending across network and web protocols and technologies that have been traditionally deployed in silos. Those “silos” pose for operators on the way to NGN an other significant challenge: The creation, access, and management of subscriber information in real time needs to be made simpler and centralized, in order to allow service providers to address the increasing complexity of such services while meeting ever more stringent time-to-market requirements and minimizing operational costs.

The convergence of fixed and mobile environments and the availability of new features, in terminals and in networks, require a greater amount of information about end users, services, and devices, which need to be stored at a single point. To better manage this continuous increasing amount of information, the so-called User Database concept was introduced as a technical mean to cope with stringent time-to-market requirements and operational costs cutting.

In next generation networks, the User Database is the component that handles all subscriber-related information. Besides a set of other capabilities and functions, a User Database can e.g. support several kinds of authentication schemata (digest, AKA, etc.) to allow authentication of the various kinds of terminals in use by subscribers in the network. Location information and authentication information for transport connection of users can also be kept in the User Database.  

Given the central role played in storing user profile information in a next generation network infrastructure, User Database can also act as an authentication provider for the application layer. Generally speaking, User Database can be seen as an identity provider through implementation of standard-based protocols and interfaces. By means of identity provider capabilities, User Database can leverage single sign-on scenarios. From a user’s perspective, single sign-on takes place when the user logs in to an identity provider and thereafter is able to use multiple affiliated service providers without having to sign on again.

As the number of application platforms and services that need to interoperate with a next generation network infrastructure grows, the number of ‘point to point’ connections required may become unmanageable. This may in turn lead to an extremely difficult to manage integration between Value Added Services with a rather short lifecycle and core service which have engineered for a rather a longer lifetime.
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