A two-week test of IP multimedia subsystem interoperability is concluding this week and participants led by the MultiService Forum today declared the effort successful. The test, known as Global MSF Interoperability 2006, was conducted at five sites globally including Verizon’s Waltham Labs and the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Labs.

Other participants included BT’s Advanced Research and Technology Centre and Vodafone in the U.K., the KT Technology Lab in South Korea and the NTT Musashino Research and Development Center in Japan. Detailed results of GMI 2006 will be released at the International Telecommunication Union event in Hong Kong Dec. 3.

One key accomplishment of GMI 2006 is getting IMS closer to actual implementation, said Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president and CTO of Verizon, which hosted an MSF press event today.

“The number one thing is a strong standards foundation,” he said. “If we can provide that, we make a contribution and then we take it to the next step. That is what GMI 2006 is all about. We are seeking the right formula for implementable standards. That’s what GMI 2006 is about. Option settings on a single network element could product an uncountable number of variations to what is supposed to be a standard element. One reason for GMI 2006 is to narrow down the options, so we can focus on what we should focus on, which is additional functionality.”

Verizon has issued an IMS RFP but is already moving to make its existing softswitch and VoIP networks IMS-compatible, Wegleitner said.

“We would start to see IMS-compatible infrastructure going in starting now and even prior to this,” he said. “We are looking at session border controllers for use in our existing softswitch infrastructure that would be IMS compatible or upgradeable. As we look at service implementations, whether they are converged or non-converged, we would be able to get them into an application server construct that would be pluggable into an IMS architecture. The value of IMS in this equation is that it gives you a target to shoot for – otherwise we are evolving on several different fronts that don’t come together at any one point.”

Naseem Khan, secretary of the MSF board and a principal member of technical staff at Verizon, said GMI 2006 helped service provider and vendor participants bridge the gap between the IMS standards as defined and what is required for implementation. The event focused on testing equipment interoperability for roaming services across multiple types of networks; session border controllers and bandwidth managers; 3GPP IMS and mobile core network interoperability; security interoperability; third-party applications and service brokering; network management and OSSs; and IP Version 4 and IPv6 internetworking.

Twenty-six suppliers participated in 98 different test cases, Khan said.