The Eurescom study programme is a unique way of performing collaborative research between telecom operators. The programme was established 20 years ago and continues to be attractive for its members for addressing emerging topics in a short time frame. Following the call for studies in early 2011 three new studies are now ready to start.

Competitive advantage

The fundamental working principle within the Eurescom study programme is collaboration. Any network operator or service provider may become a subscriber of the study programme and participate in it, if they share the interest of addressing the substantial issues facing the telecoms industry in a collaborative way. The results of the studies are exclusively available to the members of the programme so that the study subscriber organisations benefit from a direct competitive advantage from collaborative work. The programme is flexible to accept study proposals at any time.
The following summaries will give you an idea of the three new studies.

Architecture and performance indicators in an outsourced network

In the context of growing competition in the market for telecommunication services, operators are seeking to become more flexible and concurrently increase their potential for future growth. For the operators, outsourcing is a strategic choice rather than a technical or tactical one. It enables them to keep the focus on their core business, and to delegate to third parties, including other operators, professional firms, manufacturers etc., all peripheral activities such as customer management and network operation, which are considered secondary activities.
Considering the requirements expressed by operators to establish an outsourcing contract with an external entity, the objective of this study is to:
■ Define the business models and business cases that incite an outsourcer to contribute to the architecture optimisation.
■ Elaborate on the Key Performance Indicators, QoS constraints, Service Level Agreements
and reporting requirements that facilitate the set up
of and outsourcing contracts.
■ Provide a set of technical require­ments and architectural design
to help building an appropriate outsourcing strategy.
■ Study the impact of the outsourcing on the architectural choices versus in-house solutions, in terms of short and long term evolution.

Network measurement and analysis
of IP traffic

Network and service operators need to monitor and measure traffic through their networks and platforms to ensure service quality. Traditionally this comprised at least the amount of traffic, which was then used to dimension the networks and to do proper traffic engineering. Today next-generation IP-based multimedia services have additional requirements to the telecommunication platforms, and the expected quality of experience requires fine-tuning of more service parameters. In addition, reliable traffic and service usage forecasts based on continuous IP flow analyses are needed.
Based on the state-of-the-art in measurement and IP traffic analysis, additional measurement requirements coming from next-generation IP-based services will be explored, i.e. what should be measured or analysed and why. A special focus will be on the legal situation in Europe where we have different situations per country today, concluding with recommendations for regulators and legal authorities.

Network support of augmented Internet

Advances at the borderline of ICT and human cognition provide grounds for the development of services that until recently could have easily be pushed in the science fiction corner. Starting from simple augmented reality applications, and perhaps ending at augmented cognition, many services and applications are possible. Related technologies will be available on the market and will usually require communicating in some way via a body area network to some back end service pool via wide area networks.
The study is based on the assumption that in 10-15 years from now the number of communicating human supporting technologies will not be negligible and will have a profound impact on the networks. What will be the required capabilities of networks to deal with a fairly large number of these technologies? How can the different networks be efficiently combined to deliver the infrastructure to support this vision? What are the enabling platform services that must be in place to support the efficient and secure delivery of such services?

Outlook

Currently, the first studies in 2011 are starting and a second call will be issued shortly. Interested telecoms network operators can join the study programme anytime, and they can directly participate.

More information about the ongoing programme as well as past studies can be found at http://www.eurescom.eu/services/eurescom-study-programme.html