P612 X-interface for trouble ticketing and freephone service management

Rationale
Currently the majority of EURESCOM Shareholders are engaged in the re-engineering of the process used to operate their business. Amongst the major problems each PNO is likely to face in the near future are the realisation of TMN systems, the inter-operability of such systems and the issues faced in deploying them. Given that one of the major trends in the telecommunication environment is the so called "globalisation of the market", inter-operability of management systems encompasses the PNOs' need to develop automated links to other Service Providers (SP). Within TMN these links are generically referred to as X -Interfaces.

The USA has been witnessing substantial implementation progress made amongst Local Exchange Carriers and Long Distance Carriers for automated exchange of trouble tickets and carrying out order handling functions:

• Automated troubling ticketing, based on ANSI and NM Forum standards that are now being progressed through the ITU-T as X.790, is operational today in the USA as a result of the ECIC Electronic Bonding Programme.
• Automated order handling is now operational in the USA under the auspices of the Ordering and Billing FORUM which was established at the time of divestiture of the Bell System to put standardised processes in place. These capabilities are largely implemented but are the subject of enhancement at the current time.

Within Europe there is a need to move rapidly into the implementation phase of many of these specifications and to gain a practical understanding of what it takes to develop, validate, deploy and operate these inter-Service Provider management capabilities in Europe. EURESCOM has successfully set up a distributed TMN lab infrastructure (the so called PET Lab). The intention of the PET-Lab is to be a truly pan-European TMN test-bed upon which specifications for inter-operability between PNOs management systems can be tested. The first phase of the Lab has already covered some aspects related to experimenting the management of the network infrastructure (ATM and SDH). The PET-Lab can offer a very good opportunity to test and validate a pan-European Trouble-Ticketing infrastructure, leveraging on the results obtained in other fora, like the NM Forum, and within EURESCOM itself. Furthermore a full set of X interface implementation specifications is now available from EURESCOM Project P406 for the Pan-European IN based Freephone Service, addressing the Service Management Layer and including Trouble Ticketing.

Close co-ordination with the TMN Implementation Working Group within ETNO is needed for this work to be effectively downstreamed into operational agreements. Some co-ordination and joint work with other bodies like ETIS, ITFF, and NMF may also be required.

Objectives
This Project is aiming at the following objectives:

• validate through a real experiment the implementation specifications elaborated by P406
• experiment an X interface for service management, since Project P408 only addressed network management issues
• definition of a validated Pan-European Trouble-Ticketing interface. To capitalise on this issue, to obtain results that can lead to the definition of a generalised interface and to address real needs, the Trouble Ticketing interface specification should be extended (and then experimented) to address at least a second service other than Freephone. Given the European scenario and the experiments that already took place in the PET Lab, it has been decided to focus on leased line data services as the second service category, addressing specifically its realisation on ATM technology (e.g. ATM VP). Furthermore two different X reference points will be considered, specifying the interconnection of trouble ticketing management systems both at the X.Coop interface (SP-SP) and at the X.User interface (Customer -SP), where the SP role is situated in a PNO domain and the Customer role in a private domain;
• definition of a validated Pan-European Ordering/Provisioning interface. The first objective will be to identify a core set of functionality that can be used for Ordering/Provisioning management independent of underlying service/network infrastructure. The core specification will then be extended and/or specialised on selected services, with an initial focus on International Freephone Service and an intention to broaden the scope to other services (possibly Leased Line Data Services)
• tailor the X interface implementation specifications for PEIN Freephone Service Management to a shorter-term scenario, like the one foreseen for 1997, when the access to the International Freephone Service through universal international freephone numbers will be a reality. The experiment will also offer the chance to test other ways of implementing the X-interface (e.g. EDI).

Participants BT DT FT IT ST TE TF TI

Duration - Project start: Feb 96 - Project completion: Dec 97

Results For Full Publication - None

Contact Points