The Next Generation Network: issues and trends

The development and deployment of the Next Generation Network (NGN) is important for public network carriers as for them it could be an innovative and effective way to differentiate by offering a number of various value-added services at a lower cost, and consequently survive and even prosper in a highly competitive market. It is predicted that the convergence of services, applications and networks will shape the future of the telecommunication industry; it may also force network carriers to update their existing network infrastructure towards an NGN platform, in order to meet the trend and satisfy the expected increase in demand. Based on this premise and using results reported in the literatures, the dissertation explores NGN development from an exploratory perspective by studying the envisioned NGN architecture, and identifying the core technologies required for the NGN in the transport stratum; some NGN deployment related issues are also discussed.