Consumers’ appetite for advanced, feature-rich communications applications has grown increasingly insatiable. The user’s diet has become one of increasingly rich mixed media: text messaging and mobile gaming with an extra portion of push-to-talk on the side. For today’s Epicureans, not only is better quality on the requirement list, but so are lower costs.

Unlike its dietary counterpart, the telecommunications obesity crisis should be a reason to rejoice for companies that provide these services. However, operators are finding their revenue arteries clogging up and their current networks needing a tune up to support the volume, range and quality of media and services demanded by subscribers. Their lifeline is the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), the Atkins diet for the telecommunications world.

IMS can be seen as the fit, flexible and fashionable future of telecommunications, enabling users to consume as much as they like without getting out of shape. In telecommunication terms, its life-expectancy is well beyond the average. It can satisfy the desire of the consumer, while at the same time improving the efficiency and adaptability of service providers.

“Can I Buy Some IMS?”

Like many diets and technology buzz words, IMS is often misunderstood and misrepresented. It’s not a product you can just go out and buy, it can’t be realized overnight, and there’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution. IMS is a network transformation enabling the convergence of wireless and wireline technologies to support deployment of next-generation, multimedia services regardless of network architecture or subscribers’ location or access device.

Sounding familiar? In fact, convergence, “IMS-type” solutions have been operating live in service provider networks for several years. IMS is the evolution of these convergence technologies to the all-IP architecture of the future. There are many ways operators can leverage today’s switching, signaling and revenue-assurance solutions to deploy real world, revenue-generating services today while reducing costs and bridging to the all-IP future.

Benefits of IMS

The technology behind IMS is in essence simple. Using Internet Protocol, data is broken up into packets instead of being a solid stream of analog. Unlike traditional telephony, which requires a carrier channel for each service, IMS allows multiple services to be carried on a single channel, with session initiation protocol (SIP) at the foundation. With traditional circuit-switched networks, users must stop a voice conversation to send a photograph, but IMS allows that to happen simultaneously. The SIP-based architecture includes the capability to add, modify or delete sessions during an existing multimedia session or circuit-switched call. The communications architecture is simplified, thinned and made much more flexible and intelligent.

For the end-user, the practical applications of the IP network are extremely attractive. IMS enables blended services that involve concurrent voice, data and multimedia sessions, enabling users to work simultaneously with different media with richer interactions and greater levels of personalization. For example, a user can be connected to several other users and all can freely switch from voice-only to video-calling, or text ‘chat’ while watching the same streamed film. For enterprise, remote or mobile workers can now access the exact office-based services that once were only available to desk-chained workers.

IMS provides an enhanced user presence within the network space. Presence-based technology enables network users to know the status and availability of other users to improve and customize communication. They can share information about availability, location and preferred means of communication to determine the best method of connecting.

Operators benefit from the ability to bundle targeted services that offer a greater sophistication of digital interaction. These services help operators retain existing customers and attract new ones.

Service providers also gain new visibility into how subscribers use services, as well as the agility to use real-time data to protect network investments, increase profitability and improve subscriber satisfaction. As global travel increases, the issue of roaming has been pushed to the forefront. Existing networks, unlike their jet-setting users, tend to be xenophobic and don’t always communicate easily with other networks. This leads to major problems, including inaccurate billing, call fraud and security issues. New software-based solutions are available that provide critical business intelligence for operators to manage network resources, roaming, fraud, billing and security. At the same time, they can create custom, differentiated services that create new revenue streams.

Evolution to IMS

IMS is not an “all-or-nothing” solution that requires operators to throw out their existing network equipment. The foundation for IMS-ready solutions are available today, which enable operators to leverage their existing equipment and solutions and transition at their own pace to the all-IP future. “Bridging technologies” such as softswitch solutions, media gateways and session border control capabilities, as well as emerging technologies like unlicensed mobile access (UMA) and mobile centrex, enable operators to deploy next-generation VoIP services such as short message service, push to talk and converged services today. At the same time, these solutions build the framework for future horizontal integration of critical and feature-rich applications.

With IMS, the future is looking fitter and happier. User communication will be qualitatively better; customers on opposite sides of the globe will be able to interact as though they were in the same room. Or, more accurately, as though they were in the same multimedia library, with instant access to a never-ending supply of high-quality entertainment and information. At the same time, operators will be able to implement new services and adapt to technological developments faster and more efficiently.

From the first wheel to the first mobile phone, significant technological developments are always followed by a cultural paradigm shift. A newly introduced and widely adopted technology causes people to change the way they behave and think, and IMS has made its mark in the future and in the present.

Mark Whittier is vice president of corporate marketing for Tekelec.

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