Vendor giant Ericsson has more IP multimedia subsystem contract wins — 19 as of earlier this summer — and trials in progress — at least 40 — than any other major infrastructure vendor. Yet, the company that appears to be the world's most prolific vendor of IMS technology thus far was not part of the vendor team that Verizon Wireless assembled to produce its Advances to IMS reference document for enhancements to the IMS standard.

The A-IMS project was made public late last month by the carrier, but the vendor team of Lucent Technologies, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Motorola and Qualcomm has been working with Verizon Wireless behind closed doors for at least a year to develop A-IMS.

Dick Lynch, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Verizon Wireless, said in announcing A-IMS that the company felt it needed to draw together its core vendors to produce a single, comprehensive vision it could pitch to the industry at large. “The vision needed to be articulated in one place at one time rather than piece-parted, as happens sometimes with standards,” Lynch said.

Ericsson wasn't engaged for the project because it isn't one of the carrier's core vendors, Ericsson officials admitted. “Verizon Wireless went to do that work with its current core vendors,” said William Rohrbach, vice president and key account manager for Verizon Wireless at Ericsson. “We aren't one of their principal vendors, but they showed A-IMS to us well in advance and asked what we thought about it.”

So what does Ericsson think of A-IMS? Like many vendors not intricately involved in the project, Ericsson provided a diplomatic assessment: “The effort was a good effort,” said Arun Bhikshesvaran, Ericsson's vice president and chief technology officer for North America. “They have gone out and talked about important issues, some of which have already been considered and addressed in standards group, and some of which aren't.”

Bhikshesvaran said A-IMS called attention to interworking between SIP-based and non-SIP-based products, something that potentially could expand the adoption of IMS and applications such as wireless VoIP. However, he added that interworking always has been a key issue within standards bodies.

Bhikshesvaran also said it's “a little too early to tell” what Ericsson's IMS carrier customers think of A-IMS. “We haven't seen any of them slow down what they're doing,” he said.

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