Towards Context-Aware Telecom End User Services through SOA Philipp H. Mohr 1 , Giuseppe Raffa 1 , Marina Pettinari 1 , Tullio Salmon Cinotti 1 , Cristina Fr` a 2 , Claudio Venezia 2 , and Paolo Protto 3 1 ARCES Centre of Excellence, University of Bologna, Italy {pmohr,graffa,mpettinari,tsalmon}@arces.unibo.it 2 Telecom Italia Lab, Torino, Italy {cristina.fra,claudio.venezia}@telecomitalia.it 3 University of Torino, Italy paolo.protto@guest.telecomitalia.it Abstract. In this paper a SOA inspired context-aware platform for enabling context-aware Telecom services is presented. The SOA related components are highlighted and the platform’s integration into a Telecom provider’s service architecture is described — pointing out challenges in terms of protocols and semantic interoperability. An example application bridging the gap between data collected through a user’s mobile phone and a web based portal in order to provide a Virtual Location Application through our platform is presented. 1 Introduction As the terms Services Oriented Architectures (SOA) and context are being used in a number of different ways, we first clarify our working dependencies: – SOA is a design philosophy which allows the integration and interoperability of a wide range of different services and data sources, where individual components do not need to know specific implementation details about others, but can solely access data through well defined interfaces and protocols. – Context is any information that can be used to characterise the situation of an entity (Entity: person, place, object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application) [1]. – A system is context-aware if it uses context to provide relevant information and/or services to the user, where relevancy depends on the user’s task [1]. SOA has reached a mature state in the web domain, but not yet in the area of Telecom providers, this is partly due to the previous focus of Telecom providers on their current core business: voice calls, messaging and broadband connectivity. Telecommunication services have been typically realised through separate, only vertically integrated service specific networks. Some consistencies exist at the transport layer, but at the service layer there are almost none, due to proprietary E. Di Nitto and M. Ripeanu (Eds.): ICSOC 2007 Workshops, LNCS 4907, pp. 317–325, 2009. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009