SIST-V ETSI/EG 201 717 V1.4.2:2003

SLOVENSKI STANDARD
SIST-V ETSI/EG 201 717 V1.4.2:2003
01-november-2003
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(VHE) in the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) - Envolved UMTS core network

2003-01.Slovenski inštitut za standardizacijo. Razmnoževanje celote ali delov tega standarda ni dovoljeno.

This ETSI deliverable may be made available in more than one electronic version or in print. In any case of existing or

perceived difference in contents between such versions, the reference version is the Portable Document Format (PDF).

In case of dispute, the reference should be the printing on ETSI printers of the PDF version kept on a specific network

Intellectual Property Rights................................................................................................................................5

Foreword.............................................................................................................................................................5

1 Scope ........................................................................................................................................................6

2 References................................................................................................................................................6

3 Definitions and abbreviations ..................................................................................................................6

3.1 Definitions..........................................................................................................................................................6

3.2 Abbreviations .....................................................................................................................................................7

4 Description of VHE..................................................................................................................................8

4.1 Virtual Home Environment capabilities .............................................................................................................8

4.2 Structure of the issues for mapping functional modularity .................................................................................8

4.2.1 Applications..................................................................................................................................................9

4.2.2 Application support.......................................................................................................................................9

4.2.3 Transport and signalling capabilities ..........................................................................................................10

4.2.4 Fabric management and underlying protocols ............................................................................................10

4.2.5 Network access, network and server addressing, user identification and security ......................................10

5 Architecture for VHE.............................................................................................................................11

5.1 Possible mechanisms to realize VHE ...............................................................................................................13

5.1.1 Service execution within the home network................................................................................................13

5.1.2 Service execution within the USIM ............................................................................................................14

5.1.3 Service execution within the mobile equipment..........................................................................................14

5.1.4 Service execution within the serving network.............................................................................................15

5.1.4.1 Downloading from the home network to the serving network...............................................................15

5.2 Mapping services onto VHE architecture.........................................................................................................17

6 VHE service components.......................................................................................................................17

6.1 Services provided by VHE ...............................................................................................................................17

6.1.1 User aspects ................................................................................................................................................17

6.1.1.1 Networks and their supportable QoS.....................................................................................................17

6.1.1.2 Service cost ...........................................................................................................................................17

6.1.1.3 Service selection....................................................................................................................................17

6.1.1.4 Service (profile) modification ...............................................................................................................17

6.1.1.5 Language preferences............................................................................................................................18

6.1.1.6 Location information.............................................................................................................................18

6.1.1.7 Roaming ................................................................................................................................................18

6.1.1.8 Call management...................................................................................................................................18

6.1.1.9 Outgoing calls including multimedia and conference calls ...................................................................18

6.1.1.10 Incoming calls including multimedia and conference calls ...................................................................18

6.1.1.11 VASP incentives and opportunities.......................................................................................................18

6.1.1.12 Location services...................................................................................................................................18

6.1.1.13 Video-on-demand..................................................................................................................................18

6.1.1.14 Electronic banking.................................................................................................................................18

6.1.2 Network operator aspects............................................................................................................................19

6.1.2.1 Support of VHE in non-UMTS networks..............................................................................................19

6.1.2.2 Remote programming of USIM applications.........................................................................................19

6.1.2.3 Remote programming of mobile equipment applications......................................................................19

6.1.2.4 Remote programming of serving network service applications and service data ..................................19

6.2 Functions related to support VHE ....................................................................................................................19

6.3 VHE scenarios..................................................................................................................................................20

7 Requirements on inter-network interfaces .............................................................................................21

7.1 VHE service procedure ....................................................................................................................................21

7.2 Assumptions .....................................................................................................................................................21

7.3 Common procedure modules used....................................................................................................................21

7.4 Information flow diagram.................................................................................................................................22

7.5 Information flows description...........................................................................................................................22

Bibliography.....................................................................................................................................................23

History ..............................................................................................................................................................24

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pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found

in SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in respect

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can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web server)

This ETSI Guide (EG) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Services and Protocols for Advanced

The present document covers scenarios and procedures to support the UMTS Virtual Home Environment (VHE). The

Virtual Home Environment is a capability for providing operator-specific services to end users with a consistent look

and feel which is independent of location and serving network. It facilitates service adaptation to different network

environments supporting directly connected, cordless and cellular access. The philosophy of VHE has been proposed by

GSM MoU and implementation scenarios have been identified and studied by ITU-T for IMT-2000 work.

The following documents contain provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of the present

• References are either specific (identified by date of publication, edition number, version number, etc.) or

• A non-specific reference to an ETS shall also be taken to refer to later versions published as an EN with the same

[1] TR 101 695: "Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN); Universal Mobile Telecommunications

[2] ITU-T Recommendation E.164 (1997): "The international public telecommunication numbering

[3] ITU-T Recommendation E.212 (1998): "The international identification plan for mobile terminals

For the purposes of the present document, the following terms and definition applies:

Virtual Home Environment (VHE): system concept for personalized service portability across network boundaries

and between terminals. The concept of the VHE is such that UMTS users are consistently presented with the same

personalized features, user interface capabilities and services in whatever network and whatever terminal, whereever the

user may be located. The exact configuration available to the user at any instant will be dependent upon the capabilities

of the USIM, Terminal Equipment and Network currently being used or on the subscription restriction (user roaming

• transparent execution: of the "Virtual Home Environment" service features: the VHE service features are used

by mobile operators to provide more functionality to mobile users than basic mobility. The services may be

executed without necessary sharing of service and subscriber information with the visited mobile operator

• customized services: the means for network operators, service providers and users to define their own specific

• service level: it is desirable that the roaming mobile end-users will experience the same service level as within

their home networks (the Virtual Home Environment concept). Therefore, it is desirable that services are

• provisioning of subscriber specific services: mobile users may have custom demands for functionality from

their home service providers. The Virtual Home Environment intends to make management access to customized

• limited network load: the current mobile networks already manage a considerable signalling load to handle a

mobile call. This signalling is required to maintain the mobility information of the mobile subscriber up to date.

Therefore, the signalling load of new features must be limited as far as possible to ensure that the mobile

• perform charging activities: the VHE may be able to exchange charging parameters between the Home Service

Provider and Serving (Visited) Network. This exchange is required to have services such as Advice of Charge;

• perform in-band user interaction: the VHE shall provide the capabilities to order the playing of

announcements and tones towards calling/called subscribers during the call-setup, call disconnection,

• allow for subscriber interaction: the subscriber should have control capabilities to activate/register/invoke

supplementary services. The VHE should be able to add functionality to these supplementary service control

• interaction with the supplementary services: the mobile network provides a number of supplementary

Applications by their nature are in the open competitive market and should not be standardized. However, a few widely

used applications may benefit from standardization since significant performance advantages may be gained from

A basic level of standardization may be and has proven useful to made applications accessible to the marketplace and

simpler to use: e.g. the layout of the telephone and typewriter/PC keyboard. Definition of examples is highly useful to

A vast number of technologies are being pursued in this category some of which are being standardized: e.g. the ISO

ECMA-script, based on JAVAscript. Other technologies are being pursued in industry fora: e.g. WTML in the WAP

Forum. An initial list of the supporting technologies by which VHE is facilitated is included below:

• CAMEL (Customized Application for Mobile Enhanced Logic), INAP SSF-SCF interaction;

It is clear that for these technologies to be transparently supported across networks whilst being recognized at the

endpoints (terminals and servers) and in the network access points and gateways some standardization is required. It

must be noted that that some of the above technologies aim at network independence but all of them are based on a

network specific evolution. Some cases imply that the serving network supports knowledge on the service; e.g. CAMEL

The major challenge for the computing distributed processing based technologies is the efficiency and speed; it is

unlikely that in a competitive world that distributed processing technologies like CORBA will be deployed to interwork

throughout global networks. However the software architecture may be deployed on several endpoints (terminals and

servers) with high speed links between these endpoints, thus divorcing the software platform from the underlying

Resource Control in such a scenario is a complex issue of the software requesting resources for handling multiple media

streams without having direct control of knowledge of the configuration of where the resources may be sited. Service

Mediation is required in an end-to-end sense when setting up the requested service, however negotiation and fall back

procedures require definition where one endpoint fails to maintain the service or an intermediate transport network

Transport and signalling capabilities are required and must be standardized to carry the VHE capabilities; some options

NOTE: VHE may potentially be supported by a variety of transport systems so if these capabilities are to be

successful either interworking is required, or ubiquitous deployment becomes necessary. Otherwise one

Generally, modern digital networks that exist support protocols that may be used and interconnected to support the

above capabilities. Given that the world of data communication is using very high bandwidth transport mechanisms

(SONET/SDH) and deploying IP switching or ATM multiplexing to support end-to-end connectivity across these

networks. For relatively low speed services circuit switched technology may be used as a method of access, interworking

Interworking of analogue inband signalling, encapsulated signalling and frame based packet services is well developed

and the options understood. A variety of modems, PADs and PCMCIA devices exists for this purpose.

Special bridging, replicating a merging resource will be required, which are requested by the higher layers. In initial

implementations these resources may be deployed in servers and terminals. However as more complex services justify

the need, resources may need to be deployed within the network switches and multiplexers.

The basic process used in GSM and UPT (Network Access, User Identification and Authentication) requires studying

Network access will be enhanced to support network selection and remote endpoint addressing, as deregulation and

competition requires that users may select networks and address distinct servers (possibly incorporating new forms of

addressing: i.e. ITU-T Recommendations E.164 [2], E.212 [3] and E.191 [4] (IP addresses and URLs)).

User identification and authentication will be enhanced to support mutual authentication allowing the user to

authenticate the serving network and its connection to the remote endpoint. Service usage (non-repudiation) and remote

server authentication may also be required by sharing secure signed tokens used for later verification during accounting

Figure 1 provides an architecture derived from draft ITU-T Recommendation Q.1751 (Bibliography) presenting the

different functional elements and all the system parts (home, visited…) involved in the provision of VHE capabilities.

The Functional Entities and networks shown are meant primarily for the purpose of NNI definition. The provision of

This following presents a model to form the basis for development of VHE technical implementation options.

• the Service Programme PRG describes behaviour of a service and its corresponding service elements by means

of (standardized) commands. The behaviour described by the PRG may be standardized, network- or even user-

• the Service Execution Environment EXE provides (standardized) platform to execute a service programme and

provides access to the communication resources. The service execution environment is accessed via

(standardized) Application Programme Interfaces (APIs), e.g. Java-based. The execution environment also

• the Service Profile/Data DAT provides user- or network-specific input data to run a service programme;

• the Communication Control CoC handles actual communication (i.e. allocates bearers, handling of SMS, etc.);

• the MMI Control MMIC provides network/user-specific control of MMI (triggered by Execution Environment).

• the USIM (User Service Identity Module), which may provide user-specific and probably also home network

• the Serving or visited Network, which holds similar to the home network CoC, EXE, PRG, DAT.

A key characteristic of the architecture model is that service data and service programmes may be stored in a distributed

way in the UMTS network (e.g. home network, serving network, ME, USIM). The data and programme codes may be

transferred in a flexible way in the network (either "downloaded" or "pushed", indicated by doted arrows in the

following figures) as required by the service provider and/or user. A flexible co-ordination and administration (e.g.

validity, update procedures, location, etc) of the transferred programmes and data have to be defined to maintain the

The following possible solutions for the realization of VHE have been identified, which differ in the "place" where the

The following subclauses will demonstrate how these identified possibilities could be fulfilled by existing GSM toolkits

(e.g. CAMEL, SIM-Toolkit, MExE) and new techniques. They also show how the architecture model is used for the

The service execution within the home network gives the subscriber the possibility to use his own VHE services

("service tunneling") although the serving network might not be able to support the desired service or the storage and

execution of the appropriate data, e.g. when using some of the second generation systems for access to third generation

Possible realization: Evolved CAMEL/IN supports this mechanism by the use of remote procedure calls (RPC).