Potential future applications of direct, automated service activation

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 of the existing service activation architecture. Three possible functional architectures for a DASA application, each progressively more complex, are out-lined. 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.