Emerging IMS: Charting a New Direction

The road to true convergence is long and winding, as has been painfully obvious over the last few years, in particular. With the massive acceleration of technology new niches of interoperability are giving rise to questions, such as: How will IP Multimedia Subsystems and the challenges associated with them impact providers?

The good news is that IMS platforms are geared toward tackling the complexities service providers are experiencing, resulting in what Lucent Technologies has dubbed a "Blended Lifestyle." Lucent is pushing this lifestyle through their new innovations in IMS, including a highly inclusive unified phone directory and peer-to-peer streaming video. Sprint has contracted Lucent to develop its IMS platform in a deal that has remained relatively quiet since its inception. Sprint is far from alone in buttressing its system with IMS. BellCanada, British Telecom, Cingular, and BellSouth have all begun the push for IMS in earnest, with most major telco's hot on their trails.

Strategic Development
The groundwork for this element of IMS interplay is well-laid. Motorola has been working publicly on an interoperability program with Brooktrout, IPeria, and Ubiquity since 2004, and press releases relating to the companies impart that "this program is designed to provide wireless operators with a broad selection of multimedia applications that interoperate with the Motorola IMS through standards-based interfaces." In fact, Motorola and its partners have been active at 3GSM, SuperComm, and beyond, touting the advances of Motorola IMS.

Service Providers are catching onto the vast flexibility of IMS systems. While the basic IMS architecture was originally intended for Next-Gen mobile services, the framework can be expanded to accommodate any number of IP-based networks, as well as increasing the possibility of seamless wireless to wireline transitions. Essentially, IMS Infrastructures use SIP or Parlay/OSA to establish connections between terminals and networks. In the short term, this allows for connections between wireless and legacy systems, and increased inter-operability throughout specific networks.

Both the tech specs and the possible implications and applications for IMS are relatively complicated, and the true potential of the infrastructure will probably not be fully realized for some time. "One of the things IMS originally started out with," says Scott Sobers, Director of Solutions Marketing for Micromuse, "was to build a platform upon which all services would be able to communicate, hopefully, across networks." However, according to Sobers, "it caught on in the telco/ip world because it's not just about trying to get a text or MMS message across, but it's also about being able to deliver any content over any network to any device." Sobers also points out that the initial challenge in IMS is to get a set of agreed-upon standards in place.

Next »   |   1   |   2   |   3   |   Subscribe

Send Comment

© 2005, All information contained herein is the sole property of Pipeline Publishing, LLC. Pipeline Publishing LLC reserves all rights and privileges regarding the use of this information. Any unauthorized use, such as copying, modifying, or reprinting, will be prosecuted under the fullest extent under the governing law.