Agnity recently announced deployment of its nextgen SCP and applications such as LNP, Advanced Toll Free, Voice VPN, Account Code, Least Cost Routing, etc at Mexico’s leading telco, Alestra. Agnity has implemented its nextgen SCP solution at various telco networks worldwide.
There is certain overlap between nextgen SCP and SCIM. Agnity’s SCP works as an Application Server with SCIM functionality included. SCIM on the other hand provides only the service brokering functionality in IMS environment.
The business case for nextgen SCPs has been debated over the years. You have carriers who want to offer IP services across their TDM networks. But you also have those who want to utilize their existing IN applications within the TDM cloud and extend them over to IP networks. Nextgen SCPs and SCIMs are used to achieve that. If the service runs in network agnostic environment, this can result in huge CAPEX and OPEX reduction.
There are actually certain applications like LNP that mandate the use of nextgen SCP technology e.g. a carrier looking to offer LNP of a VoIP line/number over to some TDM line and vice versa. LNP is just an example of its kind. Nextgen SCPs are able to migrate most legacy applications to nextgen environment.
One SCP feature that we would like to see is to port a consumer wire line number to a wireless phone since it is all IP in 3G. In case of Agnity’s solution, the LNP feature provides the generic application logic and DB implementation. It is the carriers who own and manage the specific deployment aspects. As of now, the LNP DBs of wire line and wireless phone numbers are maintained separately.
