ABSTRACT
Communication service providers and their suppliers have accumulated quite some valuable experience to develop, test, operate, supervise and maintain Value-Added Services (VAS). In fact, an Next Generation Network service provider could add the VAS platform inside the user device, on servers in the core network or even let “third parties” deliver the VAS. Traditional VAS platforms used to each have their own hardware, operating system, database, data structures, service logic, “southbound” network interfaces and “northbound” interfaces for provisioning, billing and supervision. VAS platforms sometimes initiate transactions to core networks, but for most of the time respond to requests from these networks. Overload protection is the ability of the VAS platform to either reject incoming requests from the network, or to instruct to throttle the number of requests. The software on a complex VAS platform will evolve over time through multiple versions, under influence of new requirements, but also in order to correct errors discovered by operators worldwide.
