BARCELONA, SPAIN-- MetaSolv Software used the backdrop of the 3GSM World Congress this week to present its strategy for IP multimedia subsystem, or IMS, support in convergent activation and mediation. The company also introduced Mediation 5, a new version of its mediation application designed for multi-service 3G wireless, IP, voice-over-IP and traditional voice networks.

MetaSolv, which was named this week by analyst firm, OSS Observer in its report "Market Share: Global OSS Market Leadership in 19 Segments," as the market leader in service activation and the runner-up in service fulfillment, will position its IMS solutions as those that can achieve the holy grail of automated service delivery.

"We continue to focus on improving our OSS market position worldwide by unleashing our unique value proposition to operators, enabling them to automate the order-to-activate fulfillment process," said David Sharpley, senior vice president of marketing and product management at MetaSolv in a statement. The company's activation and mediation solutions work in conjunction with service delivery platforms for IMS service creation and assembly and at all three layers of the IMS architecture. It addresses the charging data function and charging gateway function (CDF/CGF) with the help of a partnership with Nortel.

MetaSolv's Mediation 5 solution implements the IMS offline charging function, including advanced features for aggregating, correlating, filtering, enhancing and reformatting usage records. The new release includes enhancements for supporting revenue assurance and IMS. It is embedded in a major network equipment manufacturer's IMS offering and is currently in trial with a Tier 1 mobile service provider. It also provides productized support for hardware and application vendors including Cisco, Ericsson, Nortel and Microsoft.

Features of Mediation 5 include CGF capabilities for GSM/GPRS/UMTS/IMS networks; triple-play solutions that enable an operator to deploy and charge for next-generation IP-based voice and multimedia services; revenue assurance features that target the mediation process and provide detailed statistics and extensive monitoring; and extensibility through the MetaSolv's platform.

MetaSolv also entered into a partnership last week with Foundry networks to work on activation of end-to-end MPLS and Ethernet-based services. The companies have created a joint pre-integrated solution for activating an array of MPLS- and Ethernet-based services, including quality-of-service-aware Layer 2 and Layer 3 MPLS-based VPN and VLAN-based services.

A deal with 360networks for inventory services last month may have helped MetaSolv retain the number 3 ranking OSS Observer gave it this week in inventory management solutions.