Personalization and the Universal Communications Identifier Concept

As communications systems and technology become more advanced and complex, it will be increasingly important to focus on users’ individual needs. Personalization and effective user profile management will be necessary to ensure the uptake and success of new services and devices and it is therefore important to focus on the users’ requirements in this area and define solutions that meet these requirements. The work on personalization and user profiles emerged from earlier ETSI work on a Universal Communications Identifier (UCI) which is a unique identifier of the user rather than a range of identifiers of the many of communication devices or services (e.g. numbers of fixed phone at home/work, mobile phones, fax and email addresses). This paper describes work on personalization including standardized information and preferences and an architectural framework providing a description of how personalization can be integrated in Next Generation Networks, together with the UCI concept. Keywords—Interoperability, Next Generation Network (NGN), Personalization, Universal Communications Identifier (UCI), User Profile Management (UPM)