Subscriber data and semantic web for provisioning novel end-user services in telecommunication networks

Abstract

Telecommunication networks already store a large amount of subscriber data (e.g., subscriber profile, location data, presence information), and even more data could be captured. Although this data is a key asset of telecommunication network operators, it is seldom fully exploited. This article proposes a novel architecture to enable the provisioning of new value-added services, based on subscriber data. This architecture uses semantic web to build a knowledge base from the subscriber data available in individual telecommunication networks. KBs are then federated across telecommunication networks to provide a single and unified interface to service providers for accessing the different KBs. The article also illustrates the use of the proposed architecture in a concrete scenario, and presents a proof-of-concept prototype.