Future mobile communcation systems will have to provide sophisticated services at quality levels comparable with those provided by fixed systems. An additional requirement is that these systems should be deployed by minimally impacting the existing infrastructures. In this respect an important component of future mobile communication systems is their intelligent network segment, which contains the logic of the services provided and the relevant data required for providing these services. In the context of this paper we study the problem of designing this segment. Our reference system is UMTS, but the practices presented herein may be applied to other systems as well. We identify two major problems, the first at the Mobility and Services Control Point (MSCP) level and the second at the Mobility and Services Data Point (MSDP) level. Our aim in this paper is the following. First, the overall design process is decomposed into a sequence of well-defined problems. Second, the problems are formally stated and theoretically formulated. Third, owing to the computational complexity associated with the theoretical formulations, we take the first steps towards the design of approximate (heuristic) algorithms. Finally we provide results and draw subsequent conclusions.