In telecommunications, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.
The concept of network provisioning or service mediation, mostly used in the telecommunication industry, refers to the provisioning of the customer's services to the network elements, which are various equipment connected in that network communication system. Generally in telephony provisioning this is accomplished with network management database table mappings. It requires the existence of networking equipment and depends on network planning and design.