SS7 translation into SIP did not trigger more services

Some years ago there were some limitation is the MSCs that did not allow Telco providers to offer more services; then new solutions arrived to the market such as service/mediation controllers and many of those limitations were removed, one of such limitations was that the MSC was only able to connect to one service control point (SCP).

The service controller came to solve that limitation, together with series of additional options that opened the doors for Telco operators to offer additional services (VAS). Now operators may orchestrate calls, sending the same call setup to multiple services allowing for differentiate charging, VPN services, location services, the use of application servers, etc…

But there is one particular service that I think operators did not took advantage of, and it was the possibility to translate SS7 signaling into SIP signaling. This translation allows operators to use an application server to develop any service they want using almost any programming language and opened the possibility of using “common” programmers for manipulating SS7, that some years ago was very difficult and not many people had the knowledge.

With the possibility of manipulating any call using SIP and any programming language such as Java, I would expect Telco operators to start offering many more services, something I am not sure that happened; at least it did not happen with some of the operators I know.  I would expect that subscribers will have a self service access to services such as black/white lists, multi-ring, call diversion, access to their call history anytime, restrict call hours, etc.; in some aspects I would like to see my phone service to beehive as my email box, when I receive a call from an unknown or undesirable source (spam) I will like to block it in addition to the possibility to create rules and actions for certain phone numbers.

However, opening the SS7 network to Java programmers did not trigger an explosion of services, few were developed but most of them were still been acquire such as number portability solutions. So it seems to me that Telco operators are still comfortable with the buy-in approach more that in-house development of network services, pretty much as they were 20 years ago.