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WIN is the Holy Grail of wireless carriers. With it they hope to wrest control over the development of features from Mobile Switching Center (MSC) manufacturers. They aim to use an SCP (Service Control Point) like an animal trainer at a circus, giving commands to the MSC. The MSC will act like a trained seal (or lion, or camel) to perform tricks for their hopefully burgeoning audience. But, animal rights concerns aside, there are a few requirements before carriers can run their own show. Obviously the SCP has to know exactly how the routine ... er, feature is going to run, but not just any trained seal, er, MSC will do. The MSC has to be trained with some modular tricks (triggers) that it can perform on command from the SCP. Not just any old seal will do! Phase I of WIN was just published with the first set of tricks, and the TIA standards committee TR-45.2 has nearly completed WIN Phase II. What new tricks will it enable? And, will audiences give it the seal of approval?
Phase I of WIN focused on the most obvious things that wireless systems can do to please their customers – enhanced features like voice controlled services (“roll over, Sammy”), incoming call screening (“Don’t answer that call”) and calling name delivery (“Leo, you don’t really want to eat your trainer, do you?”). These capabilities were based on triggers, basically new or enhanced TIA/EIA-41 messages that can involve an SCP in call processing. A standard to support these capabilities was recently published in TIA/EIA/IS-771. The jury is still out on whether the value of features based on WIN will be greater than the additional costs to the carriers.
In a fast moving industry, like wireless, there is no time to wait for Phase I to perfect its tricks. The audience is already clamoring for more. Phase II, also stimulated by a CTIA SRD, focuses more on billing-related capabilities, most notably Prepaid, but also Premium Rate Charging and Wireless Freephone. Two additional services, Advice of Charging and Rejection of Undesired Annoying Calls were promoted by Asian carriers involved in the TIA 3GPP2 process.
Prepaid services are now hot with carriers and consumers. Consumers like them because they do not have to make a long-term commitment to a carrier, they have no billing surprises and, to some, it helps them remain anonymous. To carriers, prepaid is a two-edged sword. Prepaid does reach out to new customers, customer service costs are less, billing costs are virtually eliminated, and the per-minute charges are higher. However, prepaid systems are also limited in functionality (especially regarding roaming) and are prone to leakage (unbillable calls) or intentional fraud. UK carrier BTCellnet recently found out that their less-than-well-planned phone-based prepaid system could be hacked, with abusers adding minutes to their phones without paying for them.
Network-based prepaid systems can be more secure than those based on modified handsets, because control over the remaining-minutes counter is in the hands of the carrier, not the customer. However, currently existing standards have not fully supported prepaid systems. With TIA/EIA-41, mobile originations generally do not involve the home carrier, permission to make calls is granted at the time of initial registration, and remains valid for several hours or days. With prepaid systems, the home carrier needs to keep track of minutes as they are used, and have the ability to warn the user when they are running out of minutes, and cut them off when they are totally out. One way to accomplish this is to force a prepaid mobile to make calls via a prepaid platform, but this immediately increases the amount of trunking involved in a call, and therefore the costs increase. In the worst cases, a roaming prepaid mobile will make a long distance call to the prepaid platform, which will loop the call back to another phone in the area where the mobile is roaming. By comparison, a post-paid mobile would have made a local call. While these systems can work quite well, they are not optimal.
The WIN approach to prepaid attempts to route signaling messages to the home system, but keep trunking and other resources within the serving system. A prepaid platform is still required, but it does not require trunking. It is just acting in a control capacity. The WIN approach provides several messages that keep the prepaid platform aware of the current balance, and that keep the customer aware as well:
Taken together, these capabilities can provide seamless, leakage-free roaming for prepaid customers, but only when the wireless infrastructure (MSCs in particular) has been upgraded to support it. This upgrade could take several years, and if all carriers do not participate in this effort, it may never be fully effective.
It is obviously possible to call 800 numbers from a wireless phone, but usually the caller still has to pay airtime charges. There was an unsuccessful venture a few years back promoting the concept of #800 numbers, but that failed, possibly due to the need for customer education. WIN-based freephone services could make the airtime free for selected numbers by dialing in the regular way. This might be particularly popular with prepaid customers who will not have a bank of free minutes to play with.
I must admit that I have always scratched my head over this service, and have never received an adequate explanation for it. Why would customers want to pay more for a call based on their location, the number they are calling or the time of day? Charging less is understandable, but the average consumer is probably going to be livid if they are charged more for making a call within a convention center, for example.
This feature was promoted by Asian carriers, and may be a sign of cultural differences. North Americans may have no trouble hanging up the phone on annoying callers (or worse), but in other cultures a more polite method is called for. By directing the caller to voice mail or a recording, it makes it seem that the party they are calling is unavailable, rather than unwilling to talk to them. Eventually the caller will probably detect a pattern of consistent unavailability and give up trying to get through.
This feature has often been talked about, but is difficult to implement and is of decreasing value as the cost of making a wireless call continues to drop. WIN Phase II will allow the announcement of the per-minute rate to be made at the beginning of a call, or the full cost of the call to be made at the end of a call. Alternatively, information on the current cost of the call can be presented during the call. Close coordination of the network is required to ensure that the information presented reflects the mobile’s pricing plan, taking into account free minutes, for example.
The toner has not yet dried on WIN Phase II, and preparations are already being made for Phase III, which will focus on location-based services. A recent CTIA SRD identified a number that could be enabled by location information (either cell/sector or the more accurate information required for the E911 mandate):
WIN is a new technology, and the concept has not proved itself yet. But it certainly is planning a large array of tricks. If they attract a large audience, the owners will be very happy. WIN features have the potential to attract new customers, and provide higher value services to existing customers.
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