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.
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Ahrens, M. Potential future applications of direct, automated service activation. J Netw Syst Manage 1, 57–70 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01026828
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01026828