Towards an open testbed for next generation network services and opportunities in Africa

With the convergence of fixed and mobile telecommunication networks with the Internet under the banner of NGN and more generally with the continuing impact of IP and information technologies on the network and service provisioning levels, the classic telecommunication environment is changing dramatically. In face of changing value chains and the ongoing orientation towards service and content provision, the establishment of a seamless service layer on top of various access network technologies has, since many years, represented a common target of different standardisation bodies. Today the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is globally considered as this common service delivery platform. From a technology perspective IMS defines a ""docking station"" for application servers and thus a better support of the new multimedia value chain driven by services and content. To enable the academia and the industry for early adoption of this new convergence service platform, open testbeds are needed to bring together the different players at an early stage. Furthermore such potentially local testbeds should be interconnected with peers to address the globalisation of the markets. The Open IMS playground@FOKUS represents a pioneering NGN testbed, which currently will be interconnected with other remote NGN testbeds around the world, including emerging NGN testbeds in South Africa at the University of Cape Town and in Pretoria. Such testbed interconnection enables the exchange of knowhow and the performance of international R&D activities with participation from local academic and industrial partners. The motivation is the fact that third world countries share the same needs as the advanced countries. Yet with low existing penetration of legacy systems, these countries may leap forward to the latest network technology.