IntroductionService creation is a fundamental aspect of the promise of next-generation networks. With roots in traditional telecommunications and data networks, new service creation implementation and deployment techniques abound in vendor offerings and in proprietary schemes developed by service providers. With the challenges and complexities of converged telecommunications and data networks, and the unprecedented demand to create and deploy new revenue-generating and cost-saving services quickly, next-generation networks are compelled to provide new service creation techniques and enable thirdparty service creation. In order to do this effectively, a framework is needed that represents the types of services to be created and the techniques that can be used to create them. This paper describes a framework for service creation that can be applied to converged next-generation networks. We first look at service creation in traditional telecommunication and data networks to set the context for the framework. We then propose a network layering to describe the types of services that are created. Next, we examine service creation techniques and show how they relate to services in the network model. These techniques include the use of policies, application programming interfaces, protocols, service building blocks, and provisioning. Some of these techniques are in wide use today in traditional intelligent networks; others, such as policy management, are just beginning to be deployed in service-provider networks, and have the capability to provide service intelligence to network services. Next, we describe how services are created and deployed in

types is covered. Finally, the topic of application, network, and offer profiles is addressed. These profiles serve to unify the paradigm connecting the specific market needs for applications to specific capabilities on specific network equipment. BackgroundThe marketplace for communications equipment has been changing rapidly. It was not too long ago that most network service providers were regulated monopolies selling only "plain old telephone service." Customers frequently acquired equipment from equipment manufacturing divisions of the same companies. Service differentiation for the customers was limited to the type of telephones they had or, at best, the way they were charged for service.