ABSTRACT
The success of wireless voice services has created opportunities for new information and entertainment services, leading to a ubiquitous information environment for the future. The potential for wireless data services has been demonstrated recently through the tremendous success of i-mode services in Japan. More and more people are getting accustomed to the concept of wireless appliances that can provide many attractive services by integrating content, voice, and text communications. Along
with this development, core global information networks are becoming a reality that converge multimedia (audio, video, and text) services on a single, seamless network infrastructure. Such convergence will not only reduce network complexity and infrastructure equipment, but also will be easy to maintain. The switching and routing technologies of core networks are evolving toward packet-based transmission such as IP (Internet Protocol), ATM (asynchronous transfer mode), frame relay, and optical routing. Thus, the migration of the core network toward packet-based transmission has created the opportunity for integrating voice and data traffic on the same wireless and IP network infrastructure.
