Third party access to PSTN by using APIs experiences from demo development (Parlay API)

Abstract

This article consists of a collection of slides from the author's conference presentation. There are various ways to open the value chain for 3n1 party service providers, giving them an interface to perform call control and also creating the foundation for other more advanced services (e.g. electronic commerce) within telecommunication PSTN network. The most promising and convenient for an IN architecture seems to be the use of APIs. The authors believe also that access through APIs is probably the easiest solution for third parties. In particular the Parlay API is discussed. The authors have been developing demo applications using the Parlay API on top of COREA. The demo is composed of three parts: third party's application (Parlay client- somewhere on the Internet), application on our network (Parlay peer) and part of the application for the mapping our INAP dialect to Parlay API (Parlay server). The development and the structure of the applications are described. The architecture of the application based on CORBA make it possible to change both third parties applications and the underlying PSTN network mapping part, with minimal interventions in the Parlay peer. In this work they discuss the advantages and drawbacks of their implementation and problems faced during the development and testing of the Call Control scenarios of interest.