China telecom operators: Applications platform overview

Value-added services (VAS) account for a significant percentage of China's network operator revenues, and the value-added services market is booming along with China's rapidly growing economy. VAS revenue as a percentage of total revenue is also growing rapidly. Most of China's operators are multi∗∗∗network operators. They need a universal service access platform to leverage their different types of networks, and Parlay X and Parlay gateways are the best choice for this purpose. However, unlike in other countries, operators in China have specific requirements for service platforms. For example, some content providers (CPs) or service providers (SPs) are listed as untrustworthy, and as a result, China's operators stress the importance of CP/SP management. This leads to specific platform architecture requirements over and above normal applications platform requirements such as rapid applications creation, network convergence, unified application portals, and unified charging. This paper, based on the authors' experience in working with China operators on service platforms, compares the process with similar work with operators in other countries and with established standards. It details China operator requirements for general purpose service delivery platforms (SDPs), describes SDP market status and deployment status, defines architecture and functionality, and lists key technologies used in implementing/deploying the SDP. It concludes with a discussion of future prospects.