Introduction
When the first SMS (short message service) was sent by Neil Papworth in December,
1992, it was hard to imagine the impact it would have, not only on the mobile industry,
but on our day-to-day lives as well. SMS is permeating nearly every area of our
lives - not just as a quick and cheap way for two people next door or across the
world to communicate with each other easily, discreetly, and almost instantly -
but SMS is also the technology that more than anything else is making TV interactive.
The widespread consumer acceptance of SMS shows just how quickly new technologies
can be embraced: SMS marketing, stock price updates, SMS parking schemes, traffic
alerts, ticketing and voting and competitions, travel alerts, outpatient medication
reminders, field-worker updates and alerts, shipping data, package tracking, just
to name a few - along with endless other new applications on the horizon for SMS.
Challenges
The success of SMS poses a challenge for many mobile operators. Global SMS traffic
is growing nearly exponentially. This growth is expected to continue to almost three
trillion messages by 2011 (Mobile Messaging Futures 2007-2012, Portio Research,
February 2007). Many mobile operators have seen the capacity of their underlying
network infrastructure become severely over-burdened. The resulting congestion can
have serious business consequences for the operator:
- less than instantaneous SMS transmission times-which can lead to customer dissatisfaction
and higher churn, or customer loss;
- constraints on the operator's ability to add new customers to a successful, revenue-producing
service;
- constraints on the operator's ability to add new SMS-based services such as televoting.
Figure 1 below illustrates a traditional SMS architecture in which every message
is stored and forwarded to its destination using a Short Message Service Center
(SMSC). The SMSC includes a gateway to all the SMS content-based services offered
in the network. This architecture represents some significant challenges to the
mobile operators when SMS traffic volume rises:
- The TDM SS7 network needs to be expanded, but it is expensive, time-consuming, and
there are technology limitations
- The entire network (including the SMSC as well as the SS7 network) has to be dimensioned
for the peak volume situation. With the growing popularity of high peak-volume applications
such as the mass voting required by popular television programs - carriers have
seen participation rates of up to 10 percent of their subscriber base - the mobile
operator costs increase significantly and the network has to be over-dimensioned.
Solution
To address these problems mobile operators can take advantage of some of the initiatives
from the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), and move the SMS traffic from TDM-based
transport to IP-based transport. In doing so, the mobile operator can take advantage
of cheaper, more flexible IP transport technology and reduce some of the constraints
inherent in more expensive, time-consuming TDM transport technology.
In addition, the mobile operator can separate traditional SMS traffic from content-based
SMS services traffic before it reaches the SMSC. Since traditional SMS traffic must
be sent to a service node, there is no need to route it to the SMSC. The separation
of traffic in this way not only lowers the load on the SMSC, but it also effectively
moves high peak volume traffic for various SMS services (for example, American Idol
televoting) out of the SMSC.
Ulticom nSignia
eSTP nSignia® eSTP can be used very effectively to offload the SMS
traffic on IP, and also to identify the SMS services traffic (like televoting),
and route it directly to the service node handling that particular service.
In Figure 2, a new network architecture is introduced where Ulticom's nSignia eSTP
is positioned close to the MSCs in order to identify the ordinary and specialized
SMS traffic as early as possible.
Key Business Benefits
- Delivers increased SMS capacity with less cost. SMS traffic can be routed in a separate
IP network without changing the signaling network infrastructure
- Provides the protection of existing SMSC investments by redirecting service SMS
traffic directly to the service nodes rather than to the SMSC
- Improved peak-volume handling through the use of IP technology and not being restricted
by limited TDM bandwidth
- Reduces the cost for TDM links. Adding IP technology will reduce the need for additional
TDM links