Technical operability in telecommunications

The regulation concerns the interconnectivity and interoperability of public communications networks and public authority networks, including the communications services provided therein.

The regulation has also provisions on signalling, timers, tones, announcements and ringing signals of communications services provided by the telephone network, and transfer of subscriber's number information in communications networks.

The regulation applies to measurement and management of the functionality, performance capacity, reliability and quality of communications networks and services. The regulation contains general obligations that apply to all general communications networks and services as well as special requirements for telephone services, internet access services and television services. In addition, the regulation specifies the meters used for quality assessment of operator services.

The regulation also gives a detailed account of the technical implementation of a functional internet connection pertaining to the universal service obligation as well as of the technical features of universal service subscriptions provided to persons with hearing and speech impairments.

The marketing of communications services and buying decisions have long been based on the price of the service. However, increasingly more often, consumers base their choice of a communications service on reliability and quality. The objective of the regulation is to ensure that consumer expectations can be met in normal conditions. In other words, the aim is to ensure that the quality experienced by users from end-to-end during the provision of the service, irrespective of the technology used to implement the service or how many players are involved to implement the service.

This Regulation is applied to disturbances in public telecommunications services, i.e. situations that disturb or threaten functionality or information security.

The Regulation covers the following:

• control and maintenance of networks and services; detection, management and prevention of disturbances; management of failure alerts by customers and modifications;
• informing users of disturbances;
• informing Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) of disturbances;
• compilation of statistics on disturbances.
   

The objective of this Regulation is to safeguard the operation of public communications networks and services in disturbances and to set requirements for the synchronisation of public communications networks to ensure the quality of
communications connections and services.

Traficom's joint NGN Working Group with telecommunications operators has prepared this recommendation to facilitate the transfer of tariff information using the SIP protocol. This allows, among other things, the transmission of unit-based tariff information in IP calls without the need to reroute phone calls via the PSTN network.

Traficom has published recommendations on IP interconnection in telephone services prepared by the Next Generation Networks Working Group. The recommendations aim at promoting the implementation of IP interconnection, which enables the use of new services online. The recommendations also improve the interworking of networks by different telecommunications operators.

The recommendations contain the best practices on IP interconnection, which have telecommunications operators have mutually agreed on. The recommendations will be updated whenever necessary.

Recommendation 201/2014 S Finnish profile for SIP I interworking