Telephony LIVE: Verizon CTO on IMS, FMC and Web 2.0

DALLAS--Verizon Chief Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner offered roadmaps for several of the carrier’s coming technology decisions in a keynote presentation here at the Telephony LIVE show this week, including its view of debates surrounding IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) and Web 2.0.

Verizon is still mulling several questions regarding how to use IMS technology, said Wegleitner. One thing about which the company is certain, though, is that IMS will need to address a full range of communication and entertainment uses. “IMS needs to address all multimedia worlds,” he said. “We’d consider FiOS as part of IMS.”

Though some see IMS and Web 2.0 in mutually opposing roles (one audience member asked why Web 2.0 didn’t render IMS irrelevant), Wegleitner sees the two as complementary, with IMS serving as a control infrastructure that can “tap into” Web 2.0. “The only way we think we can succeed is to blend those two,” he said. “They key is finding the right balance between them in terms of application development.”

Verizon hopes to use a mix of internally developed IMS applications and those from third parties to drive customer demand. By next spring (sooner, in draft form), the carrier aims to have developed a new application network interface that will link applications to the IMS architecture.

Another debate Verizon is following these days involves which technology better serves FMC: dual-mode phones or femtocells. “We’re running down both paths right now, looking for the economics to shake out.”

Wegleitner also shed some light on Verizon’s intended use of advertising—a more interactive approach that has the goal of changing consumer attitudes about advertising itself. As long as advertising is relevant to consumers and they are given some degree of choice in the matter, he said, “Advertising can be appealing to the end user.” As an example, he described the ability of customers to click on images in video content—cars or clothing, for example—to get more information about them or even purchase them. He also made reference to location-based advertising—a pizza ad that pops up on cell phones as users walk past the pizza store, for example—but added, “That’s obviously something people would have to elect into.”

To improve the economics of video traffic transport, Verizon is also impressed with peer-to-peer content delivery technologies and the possibilities of, for example, using storage space on subscriber set-top boxes to help distribute content to other subscribers. “P2P isn’t all bad,” Wegleitner said, in a subtle acknowledgement of Verizon’s historic opposition to P2P-based piracy and its tendency to hog network bandwidth.