CBAN Drives Industry Collaboration by Defining Structure for Interoperable, Multi-DLT Settlement Environment

The Communications Business Automation Network (CBAN) has brought together over 20 carriers and technology developers to design an architecture that brings to life this revolutionary settlement platform.

The members of the Communications Business Automation Network (CBAN), a project initiated by the ITW Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF) in 2018, have today announced the structure and governance principles for the special purpose entity established to create a live Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-enabled automated settlement platform for the ICT Service Provider industry.

The CBAN has published a whitepaper outlining these principals as well as the first release of the Reference Architecture and the initial set of definitions for Data-on-Demand and International Voice settlement that will be offered via the platform.

The publication of the reference architecture, the business product definitions and the whitepaper are a culmination of extensive collaboration between the members of the CBAN, the GLF and a group of leading technology developers. Such collaboration is unique in the industry as it represents the first time that many different ecosystem players have combined efforts to create an interoperable framework that can support multiple business products running on multiple different DLT implementations.

The CBAN Reference Architecture describes the design of the chains, services and solutions endorsed by the CBAN special purpose entity that has been incorporated as a membership organisation in Singapore. The objectives of using the CBN Reference Architecture are to:

Maximise the choice of technology solutions available to ICT Service Providers
Increase the CBAN’s longevity ('future-proofing')
Maximise the CBAN’s scalability in terms of the supported business products, number of technology providers developing solutions for the platform and the number of ICT Service Providers able and prepared to use it.

The CBAN Reference Architecture and the business product definitions were developed through the collaboration of the current CBAN members A1 Telekom Austria, BTS, Colt Technology Services, Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier, IDT, Orange, PCCW Global, Tata Communications, Telefónica International Wholesale Services, and Telstra, together with AT&T, Sparkle and Verizon, and a group of leading technology providers Amartus, Clear Blockchain Technologies, ConsenSys, CSG, Difitek, Internet Mobile Communications, Orbs, R3, Subex, Syniverse and TOMIA.

Commenting on the release of the whitepaper and the CBAN Reference Architecture, Louisa Gregory, lead of the CBAN working group and Chief of Staff at Colt said: “We set out in June a vision of the benefits a DLT-enabled automated settlement can deliver to the ICT Service Provider industry. The period of intense collaboration between carriers and technology vendors since then has only reinforced the strength of that vision, which has now culminated in the creation of the CBAN entity and the publication of its role, governance principles and technical framework. We are as convinced as ever that an automated settlement platform to benefit the whole industry can and will become a reality in the coming months.”

Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global and Chair of the GLF, said: “We have taken a major step closer to achieving automated interoperability and settlement of ICT Service Provider traffic. We agreed early on that this transformation can be most successful if adopted by the whole industry. That is why we are assuring complete transparency by sharing everything we are doing to allow anyone to ask questions and to engage. This published whitepaper and the first releases of the technical documents will further drive ICT industry engagement.”

Jussi Makela, Director of the GLF and project manager of the CBAN working group said “The level of support and engagement from every carrier and technology developer involved over the past six months since we launched the CBAN project has been incredible. This has allowed us to transition this very quickly from a study group into an actual development project that is expected to be in-production and delivering real value to participating members before the end of 2020.”