ATLANTA-- What a difference a year makes. Since the last National Show, the cable industry has discovered IP multimedia subsystem technology in a big way. IMS is now a cable buzzword, as network operators see the value of a network architecture that enables more rapid delivery of customized IP services.

Cable Labs' PacketCable 2.0 specification will adapt IMS to the cable environment, Time Warner Cable Chief Technology Officer Michael LaJoie said in a panel discussion here. "It is filling in the gaps in IMS," he said.

Cable's rapid deploying of voice over IP (VoIP) is leading the way to IMS adoption, according to Tom Buttermore, vice president and general manager for global cable solutions at Nortel, which has multiple IMS trials under way with cable players.

"It's not a revolution, it's more an evolution of how traditional VoIP migrates to looking at services in terms of IMS," he said. "I think cable companies are at least at parity with telcos--they are aggressively considering what IMS means to them. If IP was the great normalizer, IMS can be the great equalizer for service integration."

Cable is in more of a position to take its time and get IMS right, said George Shanks, CEO of Jacobs Rimmel, a company that provides information management for IMS systems for both cable and telephone companies.

"I don't think cable companies are in a rush to do IMS because they don't have to be," he said. "The telcos have to rush to do this because they don't have customer-centric relationships. The MSOs are taking more time to do it. As they move into wireless services, and want to provide integration, that becomes the driver for the MSOs to do IMS."