Integrated trouble management to support service quality assurance in a multi-provider context

Liberalisation of telecommunications encourages competition between the various actors in the Open Service Market (OSM). In this highly competitive context, Connectivity Service Providers (CSPs) and Value Added Service Providers (VASPs) are investigating opportunities to provide differentiated Service Quality related Service Layer Agreements (SLAs) to their customers. The services provided will span several administrative domains which makes their management complex. The key element for end users when choosing a particular service is the guarantee of support to be provided when using the service and the desire to interact with as few actors as possible. On the other hand, key issues for network operators and service providers are the cost-effective maintenance of equipment and services. The aim of this paper is to present a novel architecture that provides the necessary infrastructure, models and mechanisms to help VASPs and CSPs to rapidly introduce customer care services for user quality assurance in a Multi-Domain environment. The architecture aims at integrating TINA, TMF and TMN concepts as well as established legacy in-house customer care and help desk systems. This work is being undertaken within the Assurance part of the CEC ACTS project FlowThru.