Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the defining industry for ASN.1. Telecommunication protocols continue to use ASN.1 because of its reliability, unambiguity, preciseness and robustness. ASN.1 is a technology with a proven track record, having been deployed in critical infrastructure worldwide.

ASN.1 is used in dozens of 3GPP protocols which have spawned several generations—2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G—of wireless networks. ASN.1 is used in both radio or wired communication protocols and data analysis. Such uses of ASN.1 enable the definition and analysis of resource control plane protocol messages, lawful interception protocol messages, and call data records, and many more. The list of protocols that use ASN.1, many of which support different versions for UMTS, LTE, LTE Advanced, NB-IoT, eMTC and C-V2X, includes M2AP, M3AP, SBCAP, S1AP, X2AP, LPPa, RRC, RANAP, NBAP, RUA, CAP, PCAP, HNBAP, and RNSAP.

From the early uses of ASN.1 BER (Basic Encoding Rules) for handling Telephone Directory lookups, including matching toll free phone numbers to wireline numbers, ASN.1 has been part of the Telecommunication landscape. When telecommunications moved from wired to wireless, and a more compact communication format was needed, the industry again looked to ASN.1 and PER (Packed Encoding Rules) for handling increasingly complex message definitions in a precise, compact and robust format. Now with wireless communications having evolved to carrying volumes of data unimaginable in earlier years, the industry still relies on the foundation of ASN.1 and UPER (Unaligned Packed Encoding Rules) to achieve the most efficient use of available bandwidth while maintaining robust, reliable and unambiguous messaging regardless of whether the messages contain voice, video or data. ASN.1 continues to be the foundation on which communications in LTE and LTE Advanced are built.

OSS is proud to have among its 1500+ customers most of the leading players in the Telecommunication industry. Our commitment to quality and unmatched support have contributed to our reputation of being the world leader in ASN.1 tools.

OSS offers a variety of components for the Telecom industry, ranging from ASN.1 compilers for C, C++, C#, and Java, to specialized tools meant to speed up development of LTE and 5G solutions, such as our NAS Tools for C, C++, C#, and Java, and the ASN.1 Tools for C with LTE S1/X2 & LPPa.

3GPP releases supported

For more information about the 3GPP releases that are supported, see the 3GPP Releases Supported in OSS' Products page.