Paving the Way for an Open Service Market We live in an age when powerful communications technology is becoming available to everyone. From our home we can send and receive not only analogue voice, but also growing volumes of digital information and even intelligence in the form of agents. We are becoming increasingly mobile and are expecting the same level of connectivity in the home, in the office, and on the road. The regulatory and commercial environment in which we communicate is changing. The telecommunications market is becoming increasingly competitive. The Internet is erasing the borders between information technology and telecommunications. And the way we do business is ever more dominated by electronic exchanges of information. Is our technology ready for the open market of networks and services? Can we manage the growing complexity of computing and telecommunications technology and place it at the service of the people? The challenge for the research community is to develop the tools and techniques that will ultimately bring the full power of communications and information to everyone, in a way that everyone can easily use. The Sixth International Conference on Intelligence in Services and Networks (IS&N’99) is all about technology for paving the way to the open services market. Since the first IS&N conference in 1992 the focus of the IS&N program has continually shifted. We see existing technologies maturing while new ones emerge, but the bottom line has always been putting technology at the service of the people.

Creation Techniques for Software Development and Deployment, Agent-Based Management, Virtual Home Environment, Integrated and Scalable Solutions for Telecommunications Management. This shows that the issues related to communications management, architectures, and service creation are still of great interest, while the virtual home environment is emerging as a new key topic in IS&N. In summary, this book reflects the state of the art in research on IS&N topics, with the focus mentioned above, not only from European Union co-funded projects (mainly in the ACTS programme), but also from research organisations around the globe. February 2000 Jaime Delgado George D. Stamoulis Alvin Mullery Didoe Prevedourou Keith Start Previous IS&N Conferences and Proceedings The first IS&N conference was organised in 1992 in Paris, France. Since then, the IS&N conferences have been held almost every year, with proceedings published as part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series of Springer-Verlag. These are as follows. "Towards a Pan-European Telecommunication Service Infrastructure - IS&N'94", Hans-Jiirgen Kugler, Al Mullery, Norbert Niebert (Eds.), Aachen, Germany, September 1994, LNCS 851, ISBN 3-540-58420-X. "Bringing Telecommunication Services to the People - IS&N'95", Anne Clarke, Mario Campolargo, Nikos Karatzas (Eds.), Heraklion, Greece, October 1995, LNCS 998, ISBN 3-540-60479-0. "Intelligence in Services and Networks: Technology for Cooperative Competition — IS&N'97\ Al Mullery, Michel Besson, Mario Campolargo, Roberta Gobbi, Rick Reed (Eds.), Cernobbio, Italy, May 1997, LNCS 1238, ISBN 3-540-63135-6.

This text addresses the issues in particular order and provides the results of IS & N projects addressing those issues in a synthesized manner, so that the reader can gain insights into the European projects contribution towards the telecommunications software industry.

If you want an up-to-date, in-depth understanding of next generation intelligent networks (IN), this book is essential reading. It provides you with a comprehensive survey of current and emerging intelligent telecommunications networks, including underlying software, implementation, deployment and standards. It assesses the influence of mobile networks and IP technology on the directions that IN is taking now, and looks at the way middleware is reducing the dependence of service logic on the underlying network protocols. Moreover, it discusses the role of IN in tomorrow's network. Next Generation Intelligent Networks investigates how service creation is taking on board state-of-the-art distributed object-oriented programming techniques. The book focuses on emerging software architectures for programming and deploying value-added services, and proposes a vision of value-added services in the network of the future. Learn how new initiatives such as Soft switches, JAIN, Parlay, OSA, TINA and CAMEL help you to more effectively handle the new challenges brought on by the rapid growth of cellular mobile networks and the Internet.

Acknowledgements This Volume could not exist without the contributors of its papers. We would like to thank them on behalf of the Symposium organisers, for their support in making this a very successful conference. The editors would also like to thank all reviewers for their help in selecting quality papers. Organising such international events is not easy without the support of sponsors. We would like to thank TELENOR, which was very generous in accepting to host this conference under its Patronage. Our sincere thanks also go to all industrial sponsors and to the members and staff of the European Commission, who provided support of various kinds. In particular we would like to thank Dr. Paulo de Sousa of the European Commission, who helped us integrating the NGN concertation activity into the conference, and Ms. May Krosby of Telenor, who took care of the Secretariat. Last but not least, our sincere thanks to committee members who provided timely help in realising this conference and to our publishers Springer-Verlag for bringing out an excellent volume in time for the conference.

Discusses the main issues, challenges, opportunities, and trends related to this explosive range of new developments and applications, in constant evolution, and impacting every organization and society as a whole. This two volume handbook supports post-graduate students, teachers, and researchers, as well as IT professionals and managers.

Agent Technology is a fast growing area of research in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. Agents are autonomousproblem-solving entities residing in an environment able to solveproblems, roam network infrastructures, adapt to changes in theirenvironment an interact with other agents. Offering a useful snapshot of the current status of the field, thistext focuses sharply on the upcoming convergence of intelligentsoftware and communications systems. Contributions from leading authorities in the field covering awide range of issues, Demonstrates the increased capabilites of agents that are notcurrently achievable using traditional standards-based network signalling. This valuable reference resource is essential reading forresearchers or practitioners interested in applying agenttechnology or in business to develop next generation distributedapplications, as well as scientists and engineers in R & Ddepartments and lecturers and researchers in telecommunications andcomputer science.