Pipeline Publishing, Volume 5, Issue 6
This Month's Issue:
IMS: the Way to True Convergence?
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Addressing the Challenges and
Opportunities of IMS Pragmatically

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The Competition

The reality in today's communications industry is that strong internet players have already moved ahead by providing exciting services, driving massive uptake of new services in short time periods, and delivering multi-channel, communication-enabled Web 2.0 services over IP.

These internet companies are able to create and launch new services quickly because they are not held back by fragmented legacy infrastructures. In contrast, CSPs rely heavily on siloed, network-specific systems that escalate operational and business costs when they need to be extended or enhanced, thereby hindering providers' ability to adapt rapidly and compete successfully against more nimble internet players. For example, many CSPs' service capabilities are spread across diverse and often redundant network infrastructures that are not merged effectively, making it difficult to deliver a consistent, efficient customer experience. In the meantime, customers are demanding bundled, personalized services and a holistic customer experience based on a complete understanding of their preferences and history – all of which require complex integration.

With all the multimedia services available on the internet today, CSPs cannot wait for IMS to rescue their businesses from internet competition.


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they are even included on network television broadcasts. Organizations such as the English Premiere League, the National Basketball Association (NBA), NBC News, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) are making content – once limited to broadcast, cable, and satellite television – available anywhere in the world via the internet.

With all the multimedia services available on the internet today, and many for free or extremely low cost, CSPs cannot wait for IMS to rescue their businesses from internet competition. The competition is here today; it is real, and CSPs must meet it head-on with comparable or superior offerings.

The Solution

CSPs have an opportunity to attract and build highly valuable partner ecosystems that will help them innovate by bringing in Web


Internet players are succeeding by delivering cross-domain, multimedia services that do not require sophisticated signaling and orchestration infrastructure. Unfortunately, this success diverts potential revenue away from traditional CSPs. For example, Google can deliver nearly all of its services on internet-capable mobile handsets such as the Apple iPhone, and an increasing number of businesses and individuals are using Skype's integrated voice, instant messaging, presence, and video conferencing capabilities to provide inexpensive global communications. In addition, internet video is exploding across all channels. YouTube video clips are not only making people famous on the internet, but


developers and service providers to increase their competitiveness with internet players. By matching the kinds of services internet companies provide and then adding unmatched telecommunication services, CSPs can retake the lead. But to do this, they must incorporate quality, reliability, security, content protection, and accounting/billing into their offerings.

Traditional CSP infrastructures need a standards-based, easily accessible service layer that makes key underlying capabilities – such as presence, location, charging, and messaging – available so that partners can


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