 The concept of service provisioning in next-generation networks is quite interesting because different quality of service factors are considered while providing applications and the services which are involved in those applications. Since a lot of configuration provisioning delivery issues are involved, so we say that the overall service delivery has to be managed. That is where the notion of managed delivery services comes into play. In this module, we would look at the environment which is all set for the managed delivery services and the corresponding business models which emerge out of the interaction between the service providers, the NGN operators and the users. So the managed delivery services are essentially the consequence to the new business opportunities, which are realized because the applications which can have any form, any data type are now being provisioned through the integrated telecommunication infrastructure that includes both the voice, data and now the broadcast services as well. So with such variety, we would be interested in offering services which have some kind of dynamic configuration and adaptation mechanism. So this kind of dynamism can only be provided if we have total control on the service types, the service provisioning infrastructure and we are able to link up or blend these two together. So managed delivery services is basically a suite of service that is implemented after realizing the relationship between the service provider and the telecom infrastructure that is the NGN. So we say that the ripe environment for the managed delivery services actually is an online business environment in which there are three stakeholders namely the end user, the operator and the service provider. The service provider if it is part of the network operator in certain situations it is, in that case the third party is part of the network operator. Nonetheless, from the viewpoint of splitting exactly the functionality down to the entities, we would look at these three players. So we say that the user to begin with is the one which needs certain services and those services have to have certain capabilities committed from the network. The service is actually provisioned by the third party. The underlying infrastructure or the capabilities have to be provided by the network operator. Some of these are it is very limited view the bandwidth, the IP based routing and the QS guarantees. We've been discussing these numerous times, but from the point of view of the delivery service environment from the management viewpoint, these are the three most important considerations. The third party service provider actually provides services to the user directly. It's more of a logical relationship because essentially between the servers of a service provider and the users, there is an underlying infrastructure which is provided by the NGN. So we say that a logical relationship is realized through the NGN, but unless explicitly stated, there is no direct contractual arrangement or compulsion for the third party service provider to have with the NGN operator. We have instances like this. You can open a website without involving the service provider, without involving the network operator. Likewise, we have Torrent and Skype as peer-to-peer services. In certain cases, if it is explicitly mentioned, business relationship can also be established between the operator as well as the third party. In that case, the third party necessitates certain requirements which need to be met by the NGN network. So consequently, the managed delivery service environment that has a new business dimension would be comparable to the traditional business model in some very interesting ways. You can see here that in both of these scenarios A and B, we have three entities that is user, third party and NGN operator. However, in traditional business model, a user uses a service and pays the service charges to the third party, whereas it has an explicit arrangement or a contract or a service level agreement with the NGN operator by subscribing to the network capabilities and paying the corresponding connection charges. This scenario has no relationship between the third party and the NGN operator, whereas on the other side, if you look at the MDS-based business model, now we have a complete mesh in which now the third party is also connecting to the NGN operator. Since the third party has now an interface with the NGN operator, so it can identify and it can necessarily demand certain QS requirements that can be met through allocation and subscription to certain network resources to have, for example, high bandwidth, optimal routing, shortest path routing, etc. So it means the overall service nature which the third party was providing to the user is now going to change. In this case, a more effective business activity or a more thriving business environment is expected. As I have already said, the existing model actually has no relationship between the network operator and the third party service provider. If we look at the MDS business model, it actually is a synergistic or a win-win relationship because the service provider can provide better improved graded services that are based on certain QS mechanisms to the end user by subscribing to in an explicit way special NGN services and NGN capabilities. In this way, NGN would make money not only from the user but also from the third party and likewise for certain better services, the third party can charge user better and more improved revenue.