Service-oriented provisioning (SOP) is a technology concept developed during the early 2000s to curb the hyper competition developing in the
Wireless Internet service provider (WISP) and ISP space. It refers to the capability of defining and working with "services" instead of "on/off"
internet access
Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...
or "
service profiles" - see the
RADIUS protocol.
By enabling service-oriented provisioning, a telecommunication service provider can define their service offering as a specific set of services, the main advantage being that
product differentiation can be achieved and thus price differentiation.
Consumer advantage
Consumers can choose services adapted to their need, this becomes specifically interesting in modern type broadband networks where traditional "laptop" access is mixed with smaller hand held devices targeting for example voice services.
Challenges
Implementing service-oriented provisioning requires the network operator to re-engineer the way services are created and distributed into a network.
This re-engineering is a result of extensive usage of
profile-oriented provisioning which technically is similar to service-oriented provisioning except that a profiles based approach does not scale properly.
In a profile-oriented system the number of required profiles grows exponentially with the number of services provided by a network.
In a service-oriented system the number of required "profiles" grows linearly.
See also
*
RADIUS protocol
*
Amazingports implementation of SOP
External links
The Design of a Generic Service-oriented Cost Model for Service Providers in the Internet (COSMOS)by Peter Reich, Pascal Kurtansky, Jan Gerke, Burkhard Stiller
Towards a Service Oriented Internet
Telecommunication services
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