How to Develop Softswitch from the perspective of business and usage

The next-generation network, NGN: NextGenerationNetwork, with the soft switch technology as the core, is one of the current focuses of communication networks. The basic idea of Softswitch technology is to establish an open and layered architecture to achieve the separation of business and call control, call control and bearer, which is widely recognized as the development direction. After several years of development, although Softswitch has made great progress in device maturity, it has also been commercialized by some operators, but it has not been widely used. Why? Is it a system price problem? Is it about the bearer network? Still no "killer" business problems? This article will share some of my experiences in this field in recent years and give some comments for your reference.

1. Pre-communication issues before call establishment

People have invested too much energy in the softswitch-based architecture. In just a few years, many protocol families have emerged and are still evolving. However, in what new services can be provided in the softswitch system, it seems that there is not enough energy. From the perspective of the mature application of softswitch, it is almost just an alternative to the original TDM switch, and it does not bring people a new and more strange service experience, and the voice quality is inferior to the traditional switch in the early stage, so the final price war.

It is precisely because of the lack of potential in the business that people are still skeptical about the quality of softswitch speech even if it is comparable to that of traditional TDM switches. In addition, due to the separation of business switching and bearer networks, traditional operators also have a headache in how to locate and define faults. In this way, the development of Softswitch is even more difficult.

To enable the development of softswitch, the most important thing is to make breakthroughs in business compared with traditional switches. Since its birth, the automatic telephone switch has gone through the step-by-step, vertical and horizontal, and program-controlled switch stages, greatly improving the performance of the switch, however, there is not much change in the communication mode, that is, the caller picks up the phone to listen to the dial-up call → dial-up → wait for the response from the other party → call. As the called party is more passive, from listening to phone ringtones → calls. The incoming call display function was added and welcomed. Although the Softswitch technology can be used for telephone communication, there is still almost no improvement on the original communication model, so the current softswitch system will not be recognized by people.

How can Softswitch be recognized by people? In my opinion, we must first re-design the communication model based on the actual needs of people's communication, so that people can experience the new communication experience and great convenience brought to people under this model, this allows operators to rapidly develop their customers.

From the perspective of people's communication methods, we can divide the communication process into the following stages:

1. Pre-communication before a call

2. Call

3. Handling after the call ends

In the traditional telephone exchange mode, we ignore pre-communication content. In daily language communication, if we are going to talk to other people, we will pay attention to the situation of the other party, such as the recent emotional situation of the other party and what aspects are busy, smooth or not ......, After the meeting, we should first look at the emotional status of each other's faces.) with this information, we can prepare some specific content to make the conversation atmosphere harmonious and efficient.

Now, we can analyze the current telephone communication method. We almost cannot know the status of the other party in the early stages of the call. We can only ask after the call: "Is it convenient for you to speak now? ", Then we can make relevant strategies based on the tone of the other party's speech, and sometimes there are unnecessary troubles. In the period of program-controlled exchange, some status information, such as do-not-disturb and absent services, can be provided. However, operations are troublesome and it is difficult to manage status information ). Recently, the operator has launched a new MMS Service, which has changed the Constant Return tone for decades. Although I cannot understand the details of the phone owner, I can at least determine whether the phone number is correct. In addition, mobile phones can provide the user's shutdown status, which can be reasonably used to avoid interruptions. In a fixed phone, implementing similar functions is troublesome, And the Do-not-disturb operation is cumbersome. If you do not forget to restore the line when you unplug the telephone line, there will be busy noise when you detach the phone ......

In the Internet era, instant messaging has developed rapidly and has been recognized and liked by people. We can take a look at the functions provided by instant messaging, such as MSN and QQ. It provides more status information, such as the status of I am free, busy, going out, meeting, offline, etc, in this way, we can adopt corresponding communication means based on the other party's status. These functions meet people's communication needs, solve some problems that traditional communication methods cannot, and have been recognized by people. These functions cannot be implemented by traditional switches. At present, Softswitch has the possibility to provide these functions, but these requirements are not considered by carriers or equipment manufacturers, even a large number of iAD devices are used in actual network deployment, blocking the signaling communication between the terminal and the network core. It can be said that we use iAD to eliminate the richer information that Softswitch can provide.

Therefore, if a Softswitch-based system is expected to be recognized by people and replace a traditional telephone switch, it should adopt an end-to-end solution with a full IP address and be able to define very rich States, such as normal, meeting, going out, at home, no time, bad mood, sleeping, offline shutdown), moderate customer reception. In addition to the normal status, there are obvious alarm signs on the user terminal to remind the user to change the status in time. User status setting and modification should be simple and easy. It is best to have a shortcut button on the terminal panel for quick setting and switching.

In addition to the currently available ring tones services, more pre-communication information can be provided before the call is established. For example, if you want to call a person who is not familiar with it, you can transmit a personalized voice to replace the traditional zhenling voice.) "I am a friend of XXX and want to visit you for XX"; "I am XXX, XX important things to discuss with you), send a humorous greeting to the familiar person "two egg Tips"), sorry, come in without knocking on the door. I haven't seen you for a long time. I want to contact you ......") Replace the zhenling tone. The return tone can be used as an individual advertising business. For example, "this phone number is sponsored by Nokia, and Nokia is a professional manufacturer of mobile phones ......", Nokia will pay the operator for discounts such as basic monthly rent relief ). This will attract a large number of users to join the network, especially low-end users. Such businesses can be launched for these users to achieve a business model that allows manufacturers, operators, and users to win more.

Of course, we can use our imagination to fully explore how we can help people do more useful things before making phone calls, improve communication efficiency, establish a good communication environment, and create more business opportunities.

2. Application of CTI Technology in Softswitch

Through CTI technology, many enterprise customers have established CallCenter service centers to improve their service levels and quality. With the continuous development of enterprise informatization, ERP, MIS and other systems have become an important tool that people cannot do without in their work. However, for various reasons, people cannot always sit in their seats to handle electronic flows, which affects the overall work progress.

In the softswitch system architecture, Parlay interfaces are provided, while Parlay provides enterprise interfaces to provide the ideal CTI interfaces for enterprises. In this way, we may combine the enterprise's electronic workflow with the telephone system, and urge the parties to complete their tasks by phone as appropriate. Because traditional switches do not have open interfaces such as Parlay, it is difficult to implement such services. For example, we can use CTI technology to establish an interface between an enterprise address book and a telephone terminal to implement the click dialing function. Because click dialing can shield personnel from changing organizations and other problems, it can effectively improve work efficiency.

Enterprise customers are the main sources of revenue from operators. The businesses provided by providing such personalized interfaces can effectively improve the operational efficiency of enterprises. In addition, when users use this kind of business, there will be dependencies, this reduces the possibility of Network conversion for enterprise customers.

3. Softswitch terminal problems

We have mentioned the requirements for terminals in the pre-communication stage. I would like to discuss some issues about the functions of the terminals. The development of mobile phone terminals has brought people a new feeling. The biggest influence on people's calls is the telephone number book. According to a survey, when people use mobile phones, 40% of the cases are surrounded by available landlines, one of the main reasons for not wanting to use landlines is that there is a telephone address book on their mobile phones. Therefore, terminals in the softswitch environment should completely change the functions of traditional telephones. First, you can set up your own address book on a telephone terminal. Of course, you must have both Chinese and English input functions. You 'd better have a handwriting function.) Then you can consider adding some special functions. For example, you can design a GSM/cdma sim/UIM card reader on the phone terminal to conveniently query the address book on the phone and call the phone. At the same time, you can use a landline call to back up your own address book. After the phone is lost, you can quickly restore your address book. For example, using broadband resources to create a personal address book in the core network, users can easily call and download their own address book through a telephone terminal after authentication.

We can even imagine that after a SIM/UIM card reader is designed on a fixed phone terminal, we can provide mobile phone and fixed phone "Roaming" Services (core network to establish HLR/VLR, and provides MAP signaling interfaces). For example, if a user inserts a SIM/UIM card into a fixed phone number after returning home, the mobile user completes the "Roaming" registration on the fixed network, all calls made to mobile terminals are automatically transferred to the mobile phone. This is a very competitive service for carriers having both a fixed network and a mobile network. Even if the operator does not have a mobile network, it can cooperate with other mobile operators to provide supplementary services, such as providing such terminals at airports, stations, hotels, malls, and other places for travel and travel travelers.

From the operational point of view, SIM/uimcard should also be designed for the softswitch telephone terminal, and the operating method of host/card separation should be adopted, so that the fixed telephone users can use it remotely and enjoy the roaming function. We can also design a SIM/uim card for the guests on the phone, so that you don't have to consider the use of the phone bill when you borrow a landline call from someone else.

In addition, speech recognition dialing is also a favorite feature of users, which can effectively improve the speed of telephone retrieval and work efficiency. In addition, speech recognition technology may be combined with an automatic message server to become a "telephone secretary". When you are unwilling to answer the phone, you can set the phone number to an automatic message status, at the same time, the speech recognition function is enabled. When a call is a call from friends or family or an important person, the caller will be reminded to answer the call.

In recent years, many new residential buildings have been equipped with visual intercom phones, which are all at the cost of housing. In fact, telecom operators can cooperate with real estate agents to provide IP-based Softswitch terminals, at the same time, the video intercom function can be provided, which is beneficial to operators, users, and real estate vendors.