As we all know things that are happening today will have a major impact on services in the future. We already know that 3G currently has and 4G services will have a huge impact on all mobile operators' and their customers. The bandwidth - that limits GSM, GPRS and even EDGE services - increases and provides room for additional data streams. In fact, increasing bandwidth is most visible in mobile networks - starting from several kB/s to MB/s. But other technologies go over its current limits: VoIP, DSL and… power-supply lines.

We also know that the role of the IP network is increasing rapidly. Thanks to IP services, besides the traditional division between Circuit Switch and Packet Switch Domains, today we can talk about the third one - IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) - standardized control domain for multimedia services.

IMS introduces a services ecosystem that gives advanced session control across all types of communication enabling operators to offer subscribers higher value of multimedia service. Entering this area allows users to use a completely new breed of services such as Remote Office, Video Conferencing, Presence and location based services and even personalized Radio and TV streams. Of course, more services usually means that operators need to have more control over the network. Most of these 3G/4G services will at least require authorization in real time some of them also realtime rating. Even post-paid services will have that necessity - since we are entering the era of mobile operators being only an "access" provider.