There is hardly any doubt anymore, that IP will be the multimedia transport network of the future. Due to the deregulation of the market, and the business opportunities created by new service architectures, a large number of service providers will offer their services on the network. It is important that these services deliver the expected behaviour. However, this development is hindered by the feature interaction problem. While a lot of work has already been carried out to solve the feature interaction problem, new IP-based architectures offer the potential for radically different approaches.
Services can communicate, either directly, or via a third component.
In previous architectures, like POTS and IN, control by two or more features of the shared network resource is separate. The features do not communicate. One service is only aware of the other implicitly through the behaviour of the network. However, in IP based architectures communication between services is possible. Service Architecture , with supporting theory, techniques, and tools, has been of particular interest.