Mobile service agents and their impacts on IN-based service architectures

The emerging information society requires a powerful information infrastructure, which could realize the vision of an "electronic marketplace", where information services and telecommunication services will be offered within an open market by competitive service providers. The rapid and customized provision of services, which we call "intelligence on demand" represents the prerequisite for the realization of a dynamic services market place. In this context a new paradigm is gaining momentum, referred to as "intelligent agents". For the progressively deregulated telecommunications services market, the intelligent network (IN) represents the technological basis for the rapid provision of advanced telecommunication services. How do INs and intelligent agents relate? Are they complementary or mutually exclusive approaches. What are the impacts of agent technology on the IN concept?. Within this paper we try to give some answers to these questions.