Delivering and supporting intelligent network products in the UK public network

GPT has designed and developed a Freephone and Premium Rate service on an IN architecture, which has been offered to a number of customers in the UK and elsewhere. The service has been delivered to Mercury Communications Limited, and has been used for live, revenue-generating traffic in the UK network since mid-1992. It has also been delivered to BT, and has been undergoing extensive trials for several months. The author describes the service features, the architecture of the product and the engineering and project management activities involved in bringing the product to market. Some of the lessons learned from the experience are also discussed