INTRODUCTION

Telecom Italia Mobile S.pA. (TIM) is the largest mobile telephone operator in Europe, serving over 12 million customers with its Total Access and Communication System (TACS) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network. The service is provided 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Approximately 120,000 (140,000 peak) customer calls are handled each day, 10 percent of which are coverage concerns, such as questions about specific areas covered by the radio signal and complaints of loss of signal and interferences. TIM is headquartered in Rome and presently operates seven regional offices that are responsible for such key tasks as deployment, maintenance, and operation of the cellular network, as well as relationships with their existing and potential customers.

The TIM's SIT project (Sistema Informativo Territoriale, in English: "Geographic Information System") is aimed at providing better service to existing and prospective customers. SIT is serving about 2,000 operator stations.

Key Functions

SIT provides real-time on-line answers to customer questions related to coverage of the GSM and TACS network for the whole Italian territory. The customer care operators in the call centers need instant response from the SIT because the customer is at the other end of the phone line and must get the correct answer in seconds. Quick response times mean lower costs to TIM, a higher number of customers served per unit of time, and higher customer satisfaction.

SIT accepts several kinds of operators' input to select the area of interest including the name of the city, street name and number for the urban areas, and name of the nearest town/village for the rural areas.

SIT presents the output information in graphical form. The system extracts the map of the specified area from the database where the major Italian cities and the continuous coverage of the Italian territory is stored. The maps of the urban areas are 1x1 km in size, while the other maps are 30x30 km. The system has zoom in/zoom out and panning functions.

All information generated by the operators' interaction with SIT is stored in the SIT's database and is earmarked with the operator's ID code.

INFORMATION

SIT makes available signal coverage for TACS and GSM (for both the hand-held telephone sets and for the vehicle-mounted higher powered sets) and location of the radio stations in the area. This kind of data is presented to the operator while the geographical database is accessed for extracting the map of the required area.

The geographic locations of the areas that are not covered by the radio signal are also available. These data are a layer displayed on top of the map of the specified area. The relevant information is gathered from automatic vehicle-mounted measuring systems operated by TIM, manual measurements done by field engineers and customers' reports of lack of reliable communication (no signal, noisy channels, inability to communicate for different reasons). Each problem report is fed back to the Network Engineering Department, which validates the problem and initiates the appropriate corrective actions, if required.

In addition, SIT provides

• Geographic location of covered areas derived from the theoretical computational models used by the Network Engineering Department and the real coverage determined by field measurements.
• The geographic polygonal coverage area of each cell including the cell ID and the associated information
• The location of the dealers selling TIM's range of equipment and services including a variety of tabular information such as name of the dealer, phone/fax numbers, Internet address, credit card information, business days/hours, and so forth
• Location of public authorities such as police stations
• Location of ATM machines and Post Offices for purchase of TIM-Card credits.

The cartographic database is of urban areas and extraurban Italy. The first release of SIT includes the capital cities of the 20 Italian regions; the second release will include all the provincial capitals. The vectorial base cartography has the street network, street numbers, and associated tabular data (name and ranking of the streets, rivers, green areas, etc.). This cartography is processed using ArcInfo to derive a visually attractive conventional vector map (buffers are applied to street arcs and colored in white, built areas are given a yellowish color, green areas are green, etc.). Streets are marked with their names.

The georeferencing toponomastic database and search engine together are key elements of the system. It accepts the operators' input and outputs the x,y coordinates. The search engine's software must cope with the whole range of similar spellings that identify the same address and with city-specific nomenclatures, as well as with incorrect spelling of the names by the customer. The toponomastic database must be constantly kept up-to-date.

The application software is based on Esri's Spatial Database Engine (SDE), on the ANGI front-end processor and MapObjects software (called by Microsoft's VC++).

HARWARE ARCHITECTURE

SIT hardware architecture includes the following:

• One national server (SMP UNIX) located in Mestre near Venice hosts the toponomastic database and the address matching and search engine. It is connected via high-speed digital point-to-multipoint connections to the seven regional offices.
• Each regional office has a server (UNIX) linked to some 250/350 PCs (Windows NT) over a LAN. The configuration of each regional office is the same. The server hosts SDE and the full cartographic/tabular database, since it must respond to requests regarding the whole of Italy. The customers' calls are to a toll-free number and are handled by the intelligent telephone network. If one regional office is out of service for any reason, all calls are rerouted to the nearest regional office in operation. The application software using MapObjects is on the operators' PCs.

The SIT will be extended to provide access by selected users through Internet.