The Bearer-Independent Call Control (BICC) is a signaling protocol based on N-ISUP that is used for supporting narrowband Integrated Services Digital Network

Integrated Services Digital Network

Integrated Services Digital Network is a set of communications standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the traditional circuits of the public switched telephone network...

 (ISDN) service over a broadband backbone network. BICC is designed to interwork with existing transport technologies. BICC is specified in ITU-T

ITU-T

The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector is one of the three sectors of the International Telecommunication Union ; it coordinates standards for telecommunications....

 recommendation Q.1901.

BICC signaling messages are nearly identical to those in ISDN User Part

ISDN User Part

The ISDN User Part or ISUP is part of the Signaling System #7 which is used to set up telephone calls in Public Switched Telephone Networks...

 (ISUP); the main difference being that the narrowband circuit identification code (CIC) has been removed from the header. The BICC architecture consists of interconnected serving nodes that provide the call service function and the bearer control function. The call service function uses BICC signaling for call setup and may also interwork with ISUP. The bearer control function receives directives from the call service function via BICC Bearer Control Protocol (ITU-T recommendation Q.1950) and is responsible for setup and teardown of bearer paths on a set of physical transport links. Transport links are most commonly Time-division multiplexing

Time-division multiplexing

Time-division multiplexing is a type of digital multiplexing in which two or more bit streams or signals are transferred apparently simultaneously as sub-channels in one communication channel, but are physically taking turns on the channel. The time domain is divided into several recurrent...

 (TDM), Asynchronous Transfer Mode

Asynchronous Transfer Mode

Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...

 (ATM) or Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol

The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

 (IP).

According to the ITU, the completion of the BICC protocols is a historic step toward broadband multimedia networks because it enables the seamless migration from circuit-switched TDM networks to high-capacity broadband multimedia networks.

The Third-Generation Partnership Project

3GPP

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...

 (3GPP) has included BICC CS 2 in the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System is a third generation mobile cellular technology for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed by the 3GPP , UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunications Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for...

(UMTS) release 4.