Acme details IMS deployments

Acme Packet, which admits that its main session border control (SBC) product isn’t even defined by name in IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) specifications, said today that it nonetheless is playing a role in more than 100 IMS deployments around the globe.

Acme’s IMS claims – backed up by a survey of its IMS service provider customers – demonstrate continued slow but steady momentum for IMS, particularly among wireline operators – and mostly outside the US. Acme says its SBCs are deployed with eight different core IMS vendors, demonstrating the relative maturity of IMS interoperability. In line with trends seen elsewhere, its SBCs are implemented in those deployments in ways that try to minimize cost and complexity.

“The general theme of IMS simplification is right on,” said Seamus Hourihan, vice president of marketing and product management for Acme Packet. “As it relates to use and our products, there are a couple of different ways to deploy SBC functionality: integrated SBC, with single system hardware delivering SIP signaling and RTP media control, and decomposed SBC, where there’s physical separation of the two. Ninety percent of our deployments are of integrated SBC; the decomposed model just adds more complexity while providing the additional challenge of having to troubleshoot to different products.”

Overall, service providers are deploying SBC in IMS for the same reason as on core voice-over-IP networks: border control at network access points as well as added security capabilities, Hourihan said. IMS specifications describe network functions and standard interfaces and not the specific technology platforms that should deliver that functionality, he said. “IMS standards do not dictate a product for every functional element. That’s left up to the service provider.”

• Other key findings in the Acme survey:
• European service providers account for 50% of its IMS projects, followed by 22% in Asia-Pacific, 15% in Central and South America and 13% in North America.
• IMS projects focused mainly (65%) on wireline networks; combined wireline and wireless networks accounted for 26% of the projects and wireless-only 9%.
• Acme’s SBCs are being used as at the access border to deliver services to end customers in 80% of the projects. In another 13%, SBCs are used at both access and interconnect (with other carriers) borders; only 7% are used only at the interconnect border.