US : 3G Americas has published a white paper entitled "QoS Interoperability and Policy Management Recommendations" that carefully defines the challenges faced by operators today as demands intensify for converged services and service roaming. The paper outlines and recommends a policy-based mechanism for exchange service and network information such as QoS for providing end-to-end and real-time services. The policy management framework is a key underlying technology for roaming service and QoS control.

"As wireless networks evolve to all-IP networks, it is critical that mobile service providers continue to provide value to the subscribers while maintaining control over resources," stated Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas. "3G Americas provides these policy management and QoS recommendations for operators, while recognizing that each operator must determine its final specific implementations based on its own business requirements and network conditions."

Operators face two sets of service management issues: the first is how to manage IP-based services in an all-IP environment, and the second is how to manage end-to-end services that traverse across different network domains. The 3G Americas white paper evaluates and recommends solutions for how to policy-enable QoS interoperability across operator domains to offer "home-like" services for roamers. It highlights the need for mobile service providers to employ a policy management framework for managing QoS and other network parameters between roaming partners.

3G Americas provides the following recommendations:

-- That service providers implement a policy management framework based on 3GPP Release 7 Policy Charging Control;

-- That service providers establish a minimum set of QoS feature parity in the Packet Core and Transport based on 3GPP Release 7 Policy Charging Control in order to support QoS and Charging; and

-- That service providers establish a minimum set of QoS feature parity in the Radio Access Network in order to support real-time / time sensitive services, e.g. video share.

The white paper, "QoS Interoperability and Policy Management Recommendations," was written collaboratively by members of 3G Americas and is available for free download at: http://www.3gamericas.org/PDFs/3GAmericas_QoSPolicy_Dec19-07.pdf

About 3G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Wireless Technology

The mission of 3G Americas is to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment throughout the Americas of GSM and its evolution to 3G and beyond. The organization fully supports the Third Generation technology migration strategy to EDGE and UMTS/HSPA adopted by many operators in the Americas that accounts for over 86% of next-generation customers worldwide. 3G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, WA with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas, TX. For more information, visit our website at www.3gamericas.org.