Presence-Enabled Services

Improves communication efficiency by providing end users with the ability to control access to their availability and location

Enhanced value remains the driving force behind Voice over Internet Protocol services

This white paper addresses: • Applicable standards work • New presence-enabled services • Lucent’s plans to support presence-enabled services Contents

Abstract ...... 3

Introduction ...... 3

Presence Framework ...... 4 Implementation of Presence-Enabled Services ...... 9

Conclusion ...... 11

Appendix...... 12 and Location Services Overview...... 12

Glossary ...... 13

2 Abstract

The need for enhanced value remains the driving force behind Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. Communications services should be accessible from many places – home, office and on-the-go, independent of the type of communication device deployed. Enhanced value means simplified, efficient communications and improved productivity.

Lucent satisfies this need for value by accelerating convergence. Lucent’s Accelerate™ VoIP solutions include revenue generating next-generation applications with presence-enabled features that subscribers are demanding today. Lucent Technologies has developed the key network infrastructure elements for providing presence-enabled services. In addition, the open programmable services architecture supports the integration of third party partners to further develop presence-enabled services.

This white paper discusses the applicable standards work, describes several new presence-enabled services and highlights Lucent’s plans to support these new services.

Introduction

Presence technology allows end users and network elements to know the status and availability of other end users in order to improve communications efficiency. The concept of presence was initially associated with instant messaging service. It allowed an end user to recognize the presence of a friend or colleague online to send or receive . Today, presence has expanded to include monitoring the registration and the busy or idle status of any type of end user device, including wireless phones, VoIP clients, traditional POTS phones, push-to-talk clients, multimedia clients, and more. In addition, the concept of presence has been extended to include availability, which allows an end user to explicitly share their availability to communicate with their colleagues. Typical availability states include out of office, in a meeting with a client, in a conference call, on vacation, away sick, etc. An end user can provide this information, or it can be inferred from the end user’s online calendar. Another dimension to presence is location, which refers to the geographical location of an end user’s device. Wireless networks can triangulate strength measurements to provide the location of wireless handsets and PDAs. More recently, the concept of location was extended to laptop based, instant messaging clients or IP softphones that might connect to wireline access networks at work, home or remote locations.

By collecting and disseminating presence information (status of end user devices, availability of the individual and location), family members, friends and colleagues can select the most effective and appropriate means of communicating. Personal calls no longer need to interrupt important business situations. Emergency communications can be directed to the device that happens to be active and idle. Network applications (for example, find me/follow me service) can use presence information to efficiently and appropriately route or block incoming communication requests. For example, a call to an office wireline phone can be forwarded to a wireless phone if the wireless phone is active and idle and the end user’s availability indicates that he or she is not in a meeting.

3 Presence Framework

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has proposed a general 1 M. Day, J. Rosenberg, and H. Sugano, “ framework for sharing presence information1 along with a set of event A model for presence and instant packages that can be used to specify the status of user clients.4, 5, 6, 7 In messaging,” RFC 2778, Internet addition, the IETF proposed the use of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for Engineering Task Force, Feb. 2000. communicating presence information.2, 3 2 A. B. Roach, “ Session Initiation The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined a reference Protocol (SIP) – specific event architecture for supporting presence services.8, 9 In addition, the notification,” RFC 3265, Internet Parlay/OSA Forum has defined a set of APIs that can be used to create Engineering Task Force, June 2002. presence and location-enabled services. A simplified view of the presence 3 J. Rosenberg, “A Presence Event services architecture is shown in Figure 1. Package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)” internet draft, Internet Presence Suppliers Watchers Engineering Task Force, January 2003. Work in progress.

4 Presence User J. Rosenberg and H. Schulzrinne “An Agent INVITE Inititiated Dialog Event Presence Presence-Enabled Package for the Session Initiation Server Applications Protocol (SIP)” , draft-ietf-sipping- Presence Network dialog-package-02, Internet Agent Engineering Task Force, June 2003. Presence Clients TAS Policy 5 MSC GMLC J. Rosenberg “A Session Initiation VLR IMS MPC Protocol (SIP) Event Package for Registrations” draft-ietf-sipping-reg- event-00.txt, Internet Engineering Task Figure 1 – Presence Services Architecture Force, April 2003.

6 Vijay K. Gurbani, Igor Faynberg, Hui- Presence user agents provide explicit user status information to the Lan Lu, Alec Brusilovsky, Musa presence server. Explicit user status information might include an Unmehopa, Kumar Vemuri, and Jorge indication that the user is not available to receive any communications. Gato, “The SPIRITS (Services in PSTN The presence network agent utilizes network status information to Requesting Internet Services) Protocol” provide implicit status information about the end user to the presence draft-ietf-spirits-protocol-06.txt server. See Table 1 for examples. In addition to receiving network Internet Engineering Task Force, updates, the presence server can poll the presence network agent to August 2003. receive network presence information on demand.

7 Vijay K. Gurbani, Sudha Gouthama, Byron J. Williams “Early Implementation of the Services in PSTN Requesting Internet Services (SPIRITS) Protocol” draft-gurbani- spirits-implementation-00.txt, Internet-Draft August 2003.

8 3GPP TS 22.141: “Presence Services, Stage 1”.

9 3GPP TS 23.141; “ Presence Service; Architecture and Functional Description.

4 Status Information Presence Presence and Availability Network Agent Instant Messaging server Client is registered with Instant Messaging server Client is currently engaged in an Instant Messaging session Home Location Register (HLR) Wireless device is registered with a wireless service provider Visiting Location Register/Mobile Wireless phone is busy or idle Switching Center (VLR/MSC) Push to Talk server Push to Talk client is registered with the Push to Talk server Push to Talk client is idle or engaged in a Push to Talk session IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)* IP Phone client is registered with IP multimedia service provider IP phone client is idle or engaged in a IP multimedia session Circuit switch TDM Phone is busy or idle Conference bridge Identification of end users connected to a conference bridge Identification of speaker Telephony Application Server (TAS) A call is waiting for an end user A call is waiting for a pick up group Mobility Location (MPC and GMLC) Wireless phone is busy or idle Location of wireless device

Table 1 – Examples of Network Presence Agents and Presence Information

Watchers are typically application servers that use presence information to provide end user services. Presence services can be divided into two general categories: • Information to end users • Information to network services.

By collecting presence information across multiple devices and displaying that information to other end users, end users can determine the best method to contact each other. Network services are those services that use presence information to automatically reroute or redirect incoming communication sessions. For example, a presence-based find me/follow me application server could instruct a Telephony Application Server (TAS) serving landline phones to forward an incoming call to a wireless handset if the wireless handset is registered and idle.

Generally, location has been associated with a wireless handset. However remote workers and road warriors have laptop-based VoIP soft-clients and instant messaging clients that are also portable. These clients may connect to the network via dial up, DSL, cable modem, ethernet or WiFi access networks. If the location of these clients were known, some of the location-based services for wireless handsets could be extended to these portable clients. Furthermore, the geographic location information of

5 these portable devices is essential for emergency dispatch services. Several new techniques for identifying the location of these clients are being discussed in the IETF SIPPING Working Group. Once these location identification techniques are developed, it will be possible to extend location-enabled services to these devices.

A key aspect of the presence services architecture is the ability of the end user to control access to their presence and location information using the presence server in conjunction with their presence policy. The presence server, in accordance with the end user’s policy, provides the presence and location information to various presence applications.

There are several important principles in the presence service architecture. They include: • The concept of presence being extended from instant messaging clients to a wide variety of end user communication clients. This allows integration of multiple real time communication services into an integrated communications suite. New end user services can be developed that span wireline telephony, wireless telephony and messaging services. • Presence information from a wide variety of end user clients and network elements that can be accessed through a central presence server. This allows presence-enabled applications to retrieve status information without needing to know how to directly communicate with each end user’s clients or associated network elements.

The use of standard presence protocols and standard event packages allows presence-enabled services to be developed separately from the end user clients and presence server vendors. This also allows existing services (for example, find me/follow me services, conferencing services or messaging services) to be enhanced through the inclusion of presence information.

Presence-Enabled Services – Presence-enabled services fall into two major categories: • Information Sharing • Service Enabling.

Information Sharing – Providing basic presence information directly to end users allows the end user to determine the most appropriate means of contacting another end user. For example, if end users do not have their instant messaging client active, their colleagues might send an e-mail. In more complex scenarios, the presence server can collect and forward 10 H. Schulzrinne (editor) “RPID — Rich presence information across a variety of end user devices.10 For example, Presence Information Data Format” an employee may have multiple presence clients such as a wireless phone, draft-ietf-simple-rpid-00.txt, Internet a VoIP soft-client, an instant messaging client, etc. Knowing the presence Engineering Task Force July 31, 2003 and location of employees allows colleagues to determine the appropriate means to contact them given the nature of the communication and the status of the employees.

6 This would be especially useful information for an adminitrative assistant or receptionist who is trying to determine the best way to contact an employee. For example, today if adminstrative assistants or receptionists pick up unanswered calls from important customers, they might attempt to forward the calls to the employee’s wireless phone. However, they may not know if the employee is in the building or not. They may not also know if the wireless phone is active, busy or idle. Consequently, they may forward the call only to have an important customer directed to a wireless voice mailbox. Or, they may forward the call to an employee who happens to be in the midst of a meeting with another customer. By knowing the location of the employee, the status of the wireless phone and the employee’s availability, more appropriate decisions on how to handle incoming customer calls can be made. For example, if the employee is busy or not available, the receptionist could offer to take a message or locate another person to answer the customer’s question. If it can be determined that the wireless phone is not available but the employee’s instant messaging client is active, an instant message that alerts the employee to the awaiting call can be sent.

Service Enabling – Presence information allows service providers to automatically re-route high priority incoming communication sessions. A few specific service examples include: • Presence-Enabled Find Me/Follow Me Service – With today’s find me/follow me service, as calls arrive at a business phone and there is no response, the call is forwarded to the wireless phone. If the wireless phone is not registered or busy, the call is forwarded to the wireless voice mailbox. This can be confusing for the calling party who may hear a variety of audible ring tones and even experience significant delays in reaching the voice mailbox. Subscribers to current find me/follow me services, have multiple voice mailboxes and in some cases incur additional wireless usage charges. With a presence-enabled find me/follow me service, the find me/follow me application server queries the presence status of the wireless phone before forwarding the call. If the wireless phone is not available, the call can be sent directly to voice mail or forwarded to another call coverage point. • Presence-Enabled Call Pick Up – Wireline call pick up service allows multiple employees to answer each others’ phones. Typically, the employees are located in the same office and can hear alerting tones generated by the wireline phones. If an employee wants to pick up a call ringing at a colleague’s desk, the employee picks up his or her phone and dials a special code. This forwards the ringing call to the employee. The key to this arrangement is that the employees are able to hear each others’ phones ring. With presence-enabled call pick up, the presence of a waiting call for one employee triggers notification to all the members of the pick up group. The waiting call notification can be delivered via distinctive ringing patterns, special call-waiting tones or instant messages. With presence-based call pick up the members of the call pick up group no longer need to be co-located. Furthermore, the members of the call pick up group do not need to be served by the same call control or switching system. Members of the call pick up group can include remote workers and even wireless phones.

7 • Presence-Enabled Call Distribution – Current call distribution systems take incoming calls and distribute them to available devices. Typically calls are distributed to the device that has been idle the longest. The key to the call-distribution system is knowing the busy or idle status of the devices. Typically, this is done by having all of the devices served by a single switching system or PBX. With presence-enabled call distribution, a centralized call distribution system subscribes to the presence and availability status of the devices across multiple switching systems and PBXs. Consequently, devices can be geographically distributed and served by a multiple switching system or PBXs or they can be serverd by a combination of PBXs and switching systems. This includes devices served by wireless switching systems. • Presence-Enabled Conferencing – Today it is difficult to know who has joined a conference bridge and who is speaking. With presence-enabled conferencing, existing conference services can be augmented to provide presence information to all participants. Thus, the conference call organizer and the other participants can know if all of the participants have connected to the bridge. In addition, the conference bridge can be augmented to identify the current speaker. • Location Information Delivered with Call – Today, customers place calls to agents or an automated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system in order to receive information. In many situations, it would simplify the interaction if the agent or IVR system knew the location of the calling party. For example, if a customer calls a hotel for driving instructions, the hotel could receive an instant message that identifies the customer’s current location. If a customer calls into an IVR system to retrieve flight schedules or restaurant information, the IVR system could use the customer’s current location to tailor the information delivered (for example, providing flight times for the current city). • Location Based Call Routing – With location-based routing, incoming calls are forwarded to the nearest, idle wireless phone or VoIP soft-client, for example, a service representative, taxi driver or tow truck operator. • Presence Sensitive Voice Mail Greeting – Today, end users record and manually activate multiple voice mail greetings. These greetings typically inform the calling party if the called party is in the office, traveling on business or on vacation. The greetings might also indicate alternative reach numbers or contacts. Unfortunately, end users often forget to manually activate or deactivate the greetings when leaving and/or upon returning. With presence-sensitive voice mail greeting, presence information is used to automatically switch between multiple prerecorded greetings. For example, if the end user’s calendar indicates that he or she is on vacation, the “on vacation” greeting is played. If the end user leaves the office on business and has a wireless phone or IP soft-client active and idle, the greeting could say “ I am out of the office on business. Press 1 to leave a message or press 2 to have your call forwarded to me.” If the end user was out of the office and not available, the greeting could simply instruct the caller to leave a message. Lucent has a patent pending for this service.

8 • Location Proximity Alerting – The location of a wireless device or VoIP soft- client could be used to trigger an outgoing alerting call or instant message. For example, when an end user arrives at an airport a limo service could be notified, or when a delivery person approaches the destination, the intended recipient of the delivery could be notified. Or, as a customer approaches a hotel or restaurant, the establishment can be notified so that they can provide a personal greeting. If a soft-client is activated in a new location the travel agency or administrative assistant could be notified of the progress of the trip. Similarly, a security office could be notified about a possible theft of service.

Implementation of Presence-Enabled Services Lucent Technologies has developed the key network infrastructure elements for providing presence-enabled services in addition to working with third parties to develop presence-enabled services. The Lucent Technologies Accelerate™ VoIP solution supporting presence services is summarized in Figure 2.

Presence Suppliers Watchers

PacketIN™ ISG Partners – Instant Messaging Presence User Agent Presence Parlay/ Presence-Enabled Server OSA Applications Presence Network Agent MAP SIP LIF Presence Clients TAS ANSI4 Policy LSS MSC IMS GMLC VLR MPC LSS

Figure 2 Lucent Technologies Presence Products

The Lucent Technologies MiLife™ Intelligent Services Gateway (ISG) has been developed to serve as the presence network agent. The MiLife™ ISG provides the presence server functions including: • Collection of network presence information • Storage of presence information, both explicit and implicit • Handling implicit network terminal status updates • Maintenance of the end user’s presence policy • Authorization and authentication of watchers.

As shown in Figure 3, the MiLife™ ISG provides a Parlay/OSA API which allows third parties to develop presence-enabled applications. The MiLife™ ISG Parlay/OSA API currently supports the key Parlay/OSA Service Capability Features (SCFs) needed to implement presence services. These include: • FM – Framework • PAM – Presence and Availability Management • US – User Status • UL – User Location • UI – User Identification 9 Operator Third Party Applications Applications

Intranet/ Content Internet Providers

PacketIN™ Intelligent Services Gateway

XML GW

ISG Parlay/OSA/PAM APIs

CHAM PAM MSG DIR FW PM UL US CC/UI

Network Protocols/Interfaces

Mobile Fixed

3G Data

Figure 3 MiLife™ ISG Service Capability Features (SCFs)

Using the MiLife™ ISG presence capabilities, Lucent Technologies has partnered with a third party to provide an instant messaging service that allows end users to share not only the status of the instant messaging client but also their location information. An overview of this service is shown in Appendix A.

In addition, Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies, has developed a presence-enabled find me/follow me services demonstration called “AnyWare”. This system provides flexible routing of incoming calls based on a user’s presence, time of day and the importance of the caller. The prototype supports both POTS and SIP phones and can be easily extended to support wireless phones and instant messaging clients. The prototype has been designed to interwork with the MiLife™ ISG.

10 The Lucent Softswitch (LSS) TAS currently supports a SIP interface for forwarding call control to application servers. This allows presence- enabled application servers to provide services such as the presence- enabled conferencing and presence-sensitive voice mail greeting. Lucent Technologies plans to evolve the LSS TAS SIP interface to application servers to support SIP redirection and subscribe/notify methods. This will allow presence-enabled application servers to be invoked at various points in the call model. This will also allow presence-enabled application servers to offer services such as presence-enabled call pick up groups, presence- enabled call distribution or presence-enabled find me/follow me service.

Lucent Technologies is currently developing plans for evolving the LSS TAS to provide VoIP client registration and status information to network presence agents such as the MiLife™ ISG. This information would be provided over a SIP interface using subscribe/notify methods in accordance with the registration and dialog event packages. 4, 5, 6

Conclusion

Lucent Technologies’ Accelerate™ VoIP solutions enhance the value of communication services through presence-based capabilities. These capabilities enable simplified, efficient communications and improved productivity. Presence-based network applications provide a path to a wide variety of new revenue-producing services that enable communications anywhere with any type of communication device.

11 Appendix

Instant Messaging and Location Services Overview

Internet Pre-Conditions Wireless Village / OMA a The IMPS server has been authenticated and authorized by the 1 Internet 1 Framework SCS. IMPS IM Proxy IMPS Client A Client B b In addition to authenticating with the IMPS CSPIMPS IMPS CSP Framework, the PAM, US and UL SCSs have registered and announced Application Layer themselves to the Framework. 2 3 1 IMPS clients (A & B) log into the IMPS IMPS SSP server.

2 The server sets/stores their status in MiLife™ Intelligent Services Gateway the ISG using the PAM SCS [explicit 4 2 presence]. Central DB FW PAM – Presence Repository – ISG Shared Data 3 The server requests the presence 5a status/location for client A and client B buddies from the ISG. UL US 4 The PAM SCS returns the current status (if recent) or gets the Services Layer 6 5b information from the Core Network. 5 The PAM SCS queries the US SCS for LIF 3.0.0 ANSI-41 the status of each buddy (a) US SCS returns status or (b) queries the MPC Network Layer network (SMSREQ, POSREQ, HLR MSC ISPOSREQ). Core Network 6 The PAM SCS queries the UL SCS for the location of each buddy (SLIR,SLIA).

12 Glossary

Acronym Meaning 3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project API Application Programming Interface DSL Digital Subscriber FM Framework GMLC Gateway Mobile Location Center HLR Home Location Register IETF Internet Engineering Task Force IMPS Improved Mobile Telephone System ISG Intelligent Services Gateway IVR Interactive Voice Response LIF Location Interoperability Forum LSS Lucent Softswitch MPC Mobile Positioning Center or Mobile Phone Center MSC Mobile Switching Center PAM Presence and Availability Management PBX Private Branch Exchange PDA Personal Digital Assistant POTS Plain Old Telephone Service SCF Service Capability Features SIP Session Initiation Protocol TAS Telephony Application Server UI User Identification UL User Location US User Status VLR Visiting Location Register VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol

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