Service creation in a multi-vendor IN

As the intelligent network concept becomes implemented more and more, the extent to which its promises are fulfilled is becoming clearer. One of the important promises was vendor independence: operators should no longer be bound to a single vendor and vendors would still be capable of selling equipment to parties which have also chosen other vendors. Essential for this vendor independence is the standardisation of concepts and protocols. The first interfaces that have been standardised are network interfaces resulting in the possibility of connecting SSPs, SCPs, SDPs and IPs from different vendors. In this presentation we discuss what will be needed to extend the merit of vendor independence up to the choice of SCE products. The aim of the paper is to stimulate the discussion on how to achieve efficient and rapid service creation in a multi-vendor IN