NGN ETS Homepage

Next Generation Network (NGN) APIs to Support
Emergency Telecommunications Services (ETS)

Next Generation Networks (NGN) must provide support for Emergency Telecommunications Services (ETS) to ensure high probability of call completion during national emergency and disaster situations, just as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) does today.

The International Emergency Preference Scheme (IEPS) is designed to provide authorized users priority access to telecommunication services and priority processing of communications in support of recovery operations during emergency events.  Work has already been initiated in the IETF, ITU and ETSI standards bodies to develop provisions for special handling of priority services.

NGN Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that provide the capabilities for ETS are essential to the development of future applications and services, as well as providing ETS across multiple converged networks (packet, circuit, wired, or wireless), vendor platforms and switches, and protocols.

This aim of this site is to bring together all parties (vendors, carriers, governments and users) interested in APIs for ETS in NGN.  Therefore, an Emergency Telecommunications Working Group (Parlay ETS WG) within the Parlay industry forum is established to collect requirements and plan the development of APIs or technical solutions for NGN.

Some pointers to background information on ETS as well as NGN related initiatives on open APIs are provided here.

Useful Links

• International Emergency Preference Scheme (IEPS), IEPS is coordinating all ETS-related activities at the protocol level in IETF, ITU and ETSI.
• Vernon Mosley, "Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS)," Overview for the Parlay Group, San Diego, May 22-24, 2001.
• Ravi Jain, "Suggestions for Parlay 4.0 Requirements," Parlay 4 Requirements Session, San Diego, May 22-24, 2001.
• Ravi Jain, "Suggestions for Parlay 4.0 Requirements on Emergency Telecom Services (ETS)," Parlay Member Meeting, Munich, Sep. 12, 2001.
• National Communications System (NCS)
• ETSI Emergency Telecommunications
• The current draft of the Parlay/ETSI specification can be found at Parlay/ETSI and at 3GPP.
  • 3GPP‘s CN5
  • 3GPP2: 3GPP2 has created OSA SWG within 3GPP2 TSG-N
  • Sun‘s JAIN site
  • Parlay
  • ETSI TISPAN OSA Project
  • IETF IEPREP activities and SIP Priority Header
• Here‘s a list of contributions made by the ETS group for Parlay 4:
  • Enabling exposure of priority call parameter using the Multi Party Call Control (Part 4.3), Multimedia Call Control (through inheritance, Part 4.4) and Conferencing Call Control (through inheritance, Part 4.5) APIs Change Request.
  • Enabling routing to different carriers using the Multi Party Call Control (Part 4.3), Multimedia Call Control (through inheritance, Part 4.4) and Conferencing Call Control (through inheritance, Part 4.5) APIs (Change Request). This CR references a companion CR that introduces some references in the API Overview (Part 1) document (companion Change Request).
• Here‘s a list of accepted contributions made by the ETS group for Parlay 5:
  • Enabling policy management conditions and actions to be specified in XML (Change Request, Change Request, Change Request, and Change Request).

An informal discussion group has been set up to promote information exchange, [e-mail]. To subscribe, register at the Parlay ETS exploder page.

You can also contact John Wullert or John-Luc Bakker, both of Telcordia, for more information.

About Telcordia.  Telcordia has been a leader and active participant in the Next Generation Network (NGN) industry fora such as JAIN and Parlay defining open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for NGN softswitches and other NGN elements. For a summary of Telcordia activities in this area, see here.

---

Last modified: 3-26-2004