BROAD INDUSTRY TESTS and plugfests don't necessarily provide all the answers — or even revolutionary epiphanies — about how IMS will evolve in the public network. Nor are vendors likely to suffer specifically for avoiding participation in these events, though the attention that they garner is self-evident.

Even GMI 2006, for which official results had not been announced as of mid-November, may not provide any surprising information about IMS. However, McGarvey said having the proof of concept helps give participating companies a more detailed road map for a technology framework that will provide at least some portion of the under-pinning for most public networks by 2008.

“We're still talking about things that are pretty low on the geek-level, such as interfaces between two obscure functional modules,” McGarvey said. “The type of things you'll see is the discovery that some interfaces are further along than others, and some still need some work. While none of the results will dramatically alter the course of IMS standardization, it will give vendors and carriers valuable feedback on what portions of the standard they should direct the most attention to in the near future, which from a geek-level standpoint is pretty valuable stuff.”

PARTICIPATING VENDORS

Acme Packet
Cisco Systems
CommuniGate Systems
Empirix
Ericsson
ETRI
Huawei Technologies
IP Unity
Leapstone Systems
Lucent Technologies
MetaSwitch
Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
MRV Communications
NCS
NEC
NexTone Communications
Nortel Networks
Operax
Samsung
Siemens
Softfront
Sonus Networks
Spirent Communications
Starent Networks
Tekelec
ZTE Corp.

GMI 2006 LAB LOCATIONS

• BT Advanced Research and Technology Centre, Adastral Park, in Martlesham, Ipswich Suffolk, U.K.
• KT Technology Lab in Daejeon, South Korea
• NTT Musashino Research and Development Center in Tokyo, Japan
• Verizon Labs in Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S.
• University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory in Durham, New Hampshire, U.S