IMS: More important and confusing all the time

A new study from Infonetics Research points out the current problems legacy telephone companies face as they look to converge their services onto an IP backbone.

The report, "Service Provider Plans for Next Gen Voice & IMS," indicates that new revenues are a prime driver for existing service providers to adopt VoIP. At the same time, however, the primary means for creating new services quickly and efficiently--IP multimedia subsystems, or IMS--is being negatively affected by differing vendor initiatives and the lack of interoperability, said Stephane Teral, principal Infonetics analyst and author of the report.

Globally, even in developing areas such as Africa and Latin America, the service provider community is migrating everything to IP, Teral said. In formal interviews with 24 major service providers locally, Infonetics' senior analysts found 83% cite the revenue potential of new services as the primary driver for that convergence.

The expectation has been that IMS, which defines reusable functions and piece parts of a network, knit together by open interfaces and standards, will facilitate rapid service creation in the all-IP world. But, Teral said, "there is much confusion now around IMS."

Initial vendor response to the IMS initiative, launched from the mobile community and 3GPP, was to develop IMS platforms that were vendor specific, he admitted.

"At the beginning of this year, some of them have started to work together--we get bits and pieces of multiple vendors, working together," he said. "We see some alliances and partnerships for interoperability. Is this really helping--I just don't know."

Last week's announcement by Verizon Wireless of a new IMS version--Advanced IMS--may only add to the confusion, Teral added.

"That tells you that things are not ready--you have a major service provider asking its suppliers to work together and come up with a plan," he said. "Is it going to help the rest of the universe? I don't know."

Service providers also need to be doing more homework to determine what customers are willing to pay more for, especially if the telecom industry expects to gain a bigger wallet share, and not just fight more furiously over the same pot of money, Teral pointed out.

His study found service providers expected VoIP traffic to double over the next year, but they are still looking for a way to translate that growth into dollars.

E-mail me at CWilson3@telephonyonline.com.