ABSTRACT
The demand for advanced telecommunications services has increased enormously over the last few years. This has led to situations where network operators must deploy new services at a rapid pace when satisfying customer needs. The telecommunications monopolies have disappeared, and the fight for market shares has become fiercer than ever before. Furthermore, the demand for ever more specialized end-user services keeps growing, along with the demand for having the new services deployed within shorter and shorter time frames. The structure and function of networks must change, in order to cope with these new challenges. The telecommunications industry is witnessing a changeover from being interconnection driven to being service driven. A new discipline called telecommunications services engineering is emerging. It encompasses the set of principles, architectures, and tools required to tackle activities ranging from service specification to service implementation, service deployment, and exploitation.
