Frank Brockners, “NGN: The Journey and Beyond”, 16th May, 2006

Abstract:
The keynote commences with a review of NGN in the context of the Service Provider market with a focus on service convergence.  The presenter progresses from global trends to technological and architectural elements and their challenges.

To help service providers deliver a rich variety of services to a wide range of devices over multiple access means, the presenter reviews control frameworks as they are currently defined by multiple industry standards organizations and fora and successively defines Service Exchange Framework (SEF), which allows service providers to control customer access and use of services, without limiting the types of applications that can be deployed. The access-independent, open SEF embraces and supports today's evolving IMS standards and helps network operators achieve better visibility and control of their network. Through enhanced network and service intelligence, the SEF gives new levels of subscriber-awareness and application-awareness that enable service providers to know who their subscribers are, where they are, how they are using their authorized services and when the policies that govern their use are applied. With IMS compliance and greater granular visibility and control, service providers can deliver new, differentiated, more securely and more profitably while benefiting from heightened insight and control over network and customer activity.

CV:
Frank Brockners is Technical Leader in Cisco's Corporate Internet Technologies Engineering Division, focusing on Broadband, Subscriber-Management, and Carrier Ethernet. He's been a founding member of Cisco's Next-Generation Networks Initiative and is currently developing forward looking Service-Delivery Architectures driving future platform and systems requirements. This involves his participation in NGN-related standard bodies and industry fora, such as ETSI TISPAN, IETF and IPsphere.
Earlier Frank worked in several roles, including Product Management for Cross-Platform Technologies in Metro DWDM, Product Marketing Management for EMEA as well as Network Consultancy. He authored several papers, published in journals and international conferences. Frank, who is a frequent speaker at international events and conferences, holds a M.Sc./diploma degree in Electrical Engineering (Aachen, University of Technology, Germany; 1994) as well as a Ph.D./Dr. degree in Information Science (University of Cologne, Germany; 1999).