extend the service. Other wire- less data applications, such as corporate intranet access, entertainment information, driving directions, weather, sports and business updates have been rolled out to early adopters. It seems that a number of market-driving applications may appear. Before its launch, Orange performed extensive market research and technical engineering work to develop multimedia messaging service (MMS) for sending photographs, video snippets and sound bites to friends and colleagues from a camera-equipped mobile "phone". Convergence of voice and data demands that wireless carriers deploy a single sys- tem that delivers applications and manages, controls and measures the usage of each application. The personal nature of handheld devices is augmented by the control that service providers can exert over menus and offerings. Real-time service control systems centralise and externalise access controls from a carrier's content and applications. This approach minimises integration effort and deployment costs and simplifies ongoing system administration. As services are added and modified, application servers do not need to be changed. This is import- ant in a heterogeneous environment with many types of servers and applications from multiple vendors. With these solutions, providers can use any application or server. Carriers are not restricted in their choice of application provider and are not forced to wait for the application provider to develop the agent plug-ins that are needed for billing. Real-time service control solutions also deliver advantages such as single user sign-in. The profile- and policy-based access control allows carriers to customise offerings user-by-user. Profiles allow service providers to package services for spe- cific market segments and personalise access. Policies allow control over access to selected content and applications for new revenue streams and manage and control service quality. 6.6 Self-service Provisioning Self-service is now available for communications network se