Abstract: A virtual collaboration social or work unit or sphere of trust allows participants to contact others within the sphere, using a method designated by the participant being contacted without the participants needing to be aware of the underlying communications infrastructure or method of contact, and without any of the participants having to sharing connectivity information. In a preferred embodiment, the infrastructure can be any method of contact available to the users, including but not limited to, the public Internet, instant messaging, public or private telephony systems, or wireless communication technologies.

Abstract: A system and method for supporting and managing telecommunications services in a telecommunications network includes a management information base builder toolkit (66, 110) for specifying object definitions in an object-oriented framework of a plurality of managed objects (112) that model resources (64) within the telecommunications network. The toolkit (66, 110) is used to construct a master management information base (70, 116) for storing the object definitions of the plurality of managed objects (112).

Abstract: A system and method (10) for commissioning telecommunications services includes an SLP toolkit (13) for building a service logic program (15), and an SPM toolkit (19) for building a service management program (21), where the service management program (21) implements a support service for the service logic program (15). A distribution network node (16) is used to receive and distribute the service logic program (15) and service management program (21) to a service logic execution environment (20, 92) residing in a telecommunications network node (30, 32, 34, 36, 50) for executing the service logic program (15), and to a management logic execution environment (22, 86, 94, 102) for executing the service management program (21).

Abstract: A high speed SS7 signaling adaptation device (200) includes a platform manager (120) having a high speed control interface and operable to configure and monitor the operations of the adaptation device. An SS7 user parts process (122) is in communications with the platform manager (120) and operable to support one or more SS7 user parts protocol, and a message transfer part layer 3 process (124) is in communications with the platform manager (120) and operable to perform message routing, message distribution and message discrimination functions. A data link and physical layer process (126) is further in communications with the platform manager (120) and operable to provide broadband and narrowband SS7 signaling message transport. A plurality of high speed SS7 signaling adaptation devices are distributed in an intelligent telecommunications network.