Telecom Applications, APIs and Service Platforms

In the late 1980s, the open telecommunication services market was proclaimed in many vision statements and research papers, and regulative actions were taken to establish it. Today, due to the convergence of telecommunications, information technologies, Internet, World Wide Web and finally entertainment together with global markets and competition, we are living in an open multimedia services market and the information society is reality. As the competition between operators and service providers in the communications sector increases through, the actual value of networks and communications is decreasing. The remaining assets for future growth of the companies rely on the value of services, content and end systems that are increasing substantially within the new world of convergence and the much more complex multimedia services value chain that has emerged. The split of networks, service platforms, services and content requires on the one hand clear positioning of market players to face these challenges and on the other hand to establish a technological foundation for open business models. In this chapter, we want to trace the evolution of service and service platform concepts in telecommunications and outline technologies for converging networks and services and their latest developments.