CANNES, FRANCE — At the 3GSM World Congress, Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg declared that 2004 was the year wireless telecom recovered. This kind of after-the-fact prophecy isn't going qualify Svanberg for seer status anytime soon, but the chief executive for the world's largest network vendor definitely hit on the tone of this year's Congress.

Even with all of the signs of economic improvement last year, the telecom industry as a whole was still relatively reserved and cautious. But in 2005, wireless seems to have shed its skittishness.

Though the GSM Association hasn't released attendance numbers, exhibitors poured into the show, overflowing the traditional confines of the Palais des Festivals into four temporary exhibit halls and hotels on the Cannes beachfront. The tone of the event mirrored the enthusiasm of the vendors. Instead of focusing on technologies the industry would like to see in coming years, the exhibitors and attendees were discussing business and strategy issues affecting real UMTS networks instead of conceptual networks of future years.

Of course, the wireless industry wouldn't be itself if it didn't delve out healthy portions of hype, and the vendor community met those expectations by issuing announcements about IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) and high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). The difference is those technologies are a year out, as opposed to five.

Ericsson revealed its first IMS wins at 3GSM, announcing deals with Telecom Italia Mobile for a core to handset IMS deployment and a converged wireless/wireline IMS trial with Nordic carrier TeliaSonera. With few carriers having revealed their IMS plans, the announcements gave Ericsson a big perceptive boost in the sector, as many vendors vie for what is expected to be hundreds of global contracts.

Although Ericsson claims the two contracts announced at 3GSM are only two of the 25 signed deals it has landed for IMS so far, Lucent Technologies inked the most visible deal to date, winning the contract to supply Sprint's IMS architecture. In Cannes, Lucent introduced a new IMS service enhancement layer based on recent innovations from Bell Labs.

Lucent said the layer resides on top of the basic IMS layer and adds further converged capabilities to the platform. The layer comprises a service management tool integrating multiple subscriber information databases spanning different networks, a data integration tool that generates a unified customer profile from all the information on those disparate databases and networks, service brokering capabilities that blend multiple services while ensuring that the individual service components aren't compromised, and a roaming tool that extends IMS functions and services outside the home network. The layer also incorporates the X.805 standard security framework adopted by the International Telecommunication Union, and adds upgrades to the rules engine on Lucent's IMS platform, supporting greater customization from the user and allowing the carrier to offer different classes of service for particular customer segments.

Also at 3GSM, European wireless carrier Orange and Nortel Networks demonstrated a working HSDPA network, possibly foreshadowing a trial agreement or a potential 3G contract. (Neither company had announced a formal relationship at press time.)

The demonstration used Orange's UMTS network in Cannes, Nortel's HSDPA basestation and laptop cards from Sierra Wireless. While Orange hasn't committed to HSDPA partners yet, Nortel has made headway in Europe with the technology, landing a multi-country deal with MMO2 for its UMTS upgrade. Such a deal with a European carrier would help offset the company's recent disappointment in the U.S. when it wasn't named as one of Cingular's key suppliers for UMTS/HSDPA, despite launching the carrier's first two 3G networks under the AT&T Wireless aegis.