The project develops, validates and promotes a service architecture (called open service architecture for an integrated fixed and mobile environment (OSAM)) that meets open provision requirements for communication services over both fixed and mobile heterogeneous and multi-provider telecommunications networks. The approach subscribes to the TINA-C vision of telecommunications. The telecommunications service infrastructure is seen as a large scale, distributed processing environment. The project is committed to enrich and refine the TINA architecture with respect to personal and terminal mobility support.
The first release of OSAM shows that mobility has impact on all parts of the architecture: application level (session control and connection control), DPE level and kernel transport network level. Furthermore, wireless access is also handled at the DPE level using a specific CORBA technique called bridging. With respect to service design framework, the following achievements can be reported: establishment of an appropriate service design and development environment; guidelines for the IDL definition of the Service Machine components and the synchronous data link (SDL) specification of behaviours; transformation relations between the OSAM component model and state-orientated behavioural languages. Population of OSAM with actual components (specification of interfaces and behaviours) is in advanced status, with particular emphasis on: components responding to mobility and application requirements; resource adaptation components, interfacing the Service Machine with the available network elements and with the browsing application. A set of specifications (harmonized with TINA object definitions) is now available for later use in the project trials and also for export to the concertation mechanism. The first trial was successfully carried out. Its results confirm that current mobile communication technology puts serious limitations on hypermedia information browsing. Further improvements for efficiency require enhancements not only in the world wide web (WWW) architecture and protocols, but also an underlying, general-purpose TINA-compliant telecommunication service environment.