## 1 Introduction  
Sensors of the physical world, computing systems and information networks are the basic elements of a rapidly approaching future in which the realms of physical objects and digital information will merge, paving the way to a new generation of smart applications in a wide range of areas such as eHealth, logistics, intelligent transportation, environmental monitoring, smart grids, smart metering and home automation. The Internet of Things (IoT) [1] and related ideas picture smart devices and connected objects acquiring meaningful information about their environment and communicating it to other devices, objects and people, through a \"global network infrastructure based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual things are seamlessly integrated into the information network\" [1]. For this vision to come to fruition advancements are needed in two fundamental areas: first, the integration and accessibility of the heterogeneous and ever growing number of sensor and actuator networks; and second, the meaningful organization of the ocean of data coming from these networks and the derivation of further knowledge from it. The Sensor Web [2] is one of the more promising concepts for the development of the IoT. The term Sensor Web refers to an infrastructure with automatic mechanisms to allow applications to discover and access particular information provided by sensors networks over the Internet. But the success of the IoT depends strongly on the existence of global standards to avoid the inefficiency of developing particular solutions for specific applications. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has developed a set of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards providing common interfaces and metadata encodings to discover and access data provided by heterogeneous sensor networks and smart devices [3]. However, as stated by the recently created Standard Working Group on Sensor Web for IoT (www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/sweiotswg) (SWE_IoT_SWG), these standardization efforts still need to be extended to all the interfaces that can be identified between the lower layer, represented by sensor networks and smart devices, and the upper layer of final applications. The SWE_IoT_SWG identifies interfaces between three different layers: a Sensor Layer (_i.e._, sensor networks and smart devices), a Sensor Web Layer and an Application Layer (_i.e._, final IoT applications). In our view, the OGC SWE represents a mature standard interface between the Sensor Web Layer and the Application Layer. Universal standards for the interface between the Sensor Web and the underlying Sensor Layer, however, are still an open issue [4; 5; 6; 7]. International telecommunication standardization organizations, including the ITU, ETSI and 3 GPP [8; 9; 10], are involved in a number of IoT initiatives working towards standard interfaces between the Sensor Layer and the Sensor Web. Seeking to contribute to these initiatives, in this paper we present a conceptual platform within a global Telco framework, which relies on Next Generation Networks to interconnect the Sensor Layer and the Sensor Web, and on OGC SWE standards to provide interfaces between Sensor Web and IoT applications. More specifically our Telco IoT Platform was designed following an idea that the ITU has identified as important in the standardization process to create the IoT: the Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN). The ITU defines a USN as \"a conceptual network built over existing physical networks which makes use of sensed data and provides knowledge services to anyone, anywhere and at anytime, and where the information is generated by using context awareness\" [11]. To better understand the key elements in the Telco IoT Platform we propose, it is useful to review the main components of a USN:* USN Applications and Services platform, which enables the effective use of a USN in a given application or service.