Virtual private networks in Europe: growth, standardisation and evolution

Virtual private network (VPN) services offered by telecommunications companies (telcos) are being exploited by many large multinational businesses in order to reap the benefits of pricing economies, financial accountability, network rationalisation and the management control that outsourcing of telecomms can provide. Bilateral agreements between European telcos to offer international VPN services are an enabler for increased service transparency between disparate national VPNs. Resulting standardisation of aspects of the national services is likely to impact the development of common control signalling (CCS) systems, feature sets and service management capabilities. Intelligent network (IN) platforms will offer the opportunity for enhanced VPN services by interconnection at the intelligent level