Telecom trade shows are the best incubators of excitement for technologies that are still in their earliest stages of development — the stages when there is still real buzz about the potential of something, when that buzz has yet to turn into overexposure and when people are not yet jaded by too much hype.

Such was the case for the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture at Supercomm 2005 in Chicago earlier this month. IMS has moved quickly and aggressively on the scene with the support of some large and aggressive technology developers as backers, as well as the beginnings of a deployment from at least one major U.S. service provider (Sprint).

Supercomm, being timed as it is, was a coming out party of sorts for the architecture: the first time the vendors developing aspects of it were all gathered in one place with an opportunity to make announcements about it, pledge their commitment to it and generally try to inform their service provider audience as thoroughly as possible about their involvement in it in hopes of getting their IMS business.

To accomplish that to the best of their abilities, those vendors first had to answer the inevitable questions of how they define IMS, what they see as the architecture's primary advantages, what applications it will allow carriers to offer and why carriers should direct their investment funds toward it.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the telecom industry's history of technology debate and even what seemed to be some developing industry disparity about what IMS really is, the proponents of IMS all seemed to be similarly aligned at Supercomm. That's likely due in large part to the fact that IMS is a network specification, not just a concept, created by the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP). It's also likely because the IMS architecture is based on IP, which has become virtually synonymous with next-generation networks and applications.

At Supercomm, the definition of IMS was often described in terms of stovepipes. It's a good analogy for engineers and management types alike, because regardless of discipline, everyone understands the idea of either isolating something in a silo or freeing it from that isolation. In that kind of analogy, IMS is something that can be used to mitigate the disconnection between the silos, which are different types of networks. Sandip Mukerjee, a vice president at Lucent Technologies, was one of the IMS advocates who described the usefulness of IMS as the ability to merge stovepipes.

“You need common subscriber databases to unleash these apps, and you need to be able to have networks that can scale,” Mukerjee said. “That's the rationale for IMS.”

Lucent used Supercomm to announce, among other initiatives, that it will resell Kodiak Network's push-to-talk (P2T) platform as part of its IMS portfolio, expanding a previous marketing relationship between the two vendors. Lucent will offer Kodiak's P2T Real-Time Exchange server and presence, conferencing and voice bridge applications as part of an IMS application suite, riding over its IMS-based core solution. The two companies will also work together to migrate the platform to an end-to-end voice-over-IP (VoIP) solution for future CDMA2000 and UMTS network deployments.

“As we move forward with push-to-talk and our IMS-based services, we fit in very well with Lucent's IMS strategy,” said Bruce Lawler, vice president of business development for Kodiak Networks. “We're basically becoming an application on their IMS core.”

That very basic concept about applications represents another theme that characterized how IMS was represented at Supercomm '05: It is all about the applications. “Technology's great — I'm an engineer at heart — but you need to solve business problems and provide economic value,” said Lucent's Mukerjee, who added that the challenge for service providers is getting more “wallet share” for telecom services. “Anything you do has to enhance lifestyle,” he said. “A lot of the new value created will be in applications, and we will absolutely invest in that.”

That's in keeping with Lucent's new promotional tagline of helping create “blended lifestyle services.” Mukerjee gave an example of that in describing an application called Active Phonebook, which would allow a user to pull up a contact list, find where a contact is and whether that contact was reachable, and then reach that contact via P2T, regardless of device.

“I blended together presence, contact list and push to talk,” Mukerjee said. “I'm moving money we spend in other areas into the telecom wallet. When we tested this through market research, we found willingness to pay.”

The IMS message from Tekelec was similarly about applications built around an IMS core. The company used Supercomm to announce its “Real Convergence” strategy, which it said is intended to help support service providers through their transitions to more services- and subscriber-centric business models. In many ways, Tekelec's newly christened strategy is the culmination of the company's momentum in IP technology, marked by multiple IP-related acquisitions over the past 18 months.

Tekelec discussed its new strategy in the context of its signaling, IP switching, applications development and performance management capabilities, pointing to how all those functions contribute to carriers' ability to provide flexible services over varied networks. The company named the components of its Real Convergence platform as IMS-based messaging, presence management, IP Centrex, enhanced VoIP services and enhanced pre-paid services.

Vaughn Eisler, product strategist for Tekelec, gave one example of the convergence strategy as a carrier's ability to do cross platform short messaging, in which the network figures out what device the user is using based on presence and signaling information, regardless of whether it's going from a 2G to 3G wireless network or vice versa.

“Because you're sitting on an IP endpoint, you can receive the message on that interface,” Eisler said. “It has tremendous value because it allows you to have this bridge.”

Like other vendors, Tekelec's Eisler pointed out that the value of IMS is all about the services it enables and the flexibility it offers in figuring out which services will make money. Eisler called IMS a “framework for re-usable capabilities and for the delivery of next-generation apps.”

“We believe IMS is driven by applications because you have to have an ROI model that's four to five months or less,” he said.

He cautioned, however, that Tekelec expects uptake of both the IMS architecture and applications based on it to be fairly slow in the U.S., with early, small-scale deployments in 2006 and the second phases of rollouts in the 2007 to 2009 time frame.

Outside North America, however, IMS is gathering steam more quickly. Nokia, for example, named its first commercial contract for a converged network based on IMS at Supercomm, announcing an agreement with Finnish mobile virtual network operator Saunalahti for specific IMS elements that will bridge wireline, GSM and Wi-Fi networks.

Nokia will supply Saunalahti with its MSC Server Solution, a 3GPP Release 4 mobile switching center that centralizes the call control of the network in the core while distributing switching functions to the edge, as well as Nokia's Unlicensed Mobile Access solution, which allows GSM calls to tunnel over Wi-Fi IP networks. Of the specific IMS elements, Nokia will deploy its Telecommunications Application Server, a SIP-based server off of which Saunalahti can launch VoIP applications and its Authentication Server, which combines all customer information and authentication functions on a single server.

Nokia has deployed IMS elements to other carriers in the past. Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) is using Nokia software and infrastructure to launch its video communications service, and Chunghwa Telecom has launched Nokia's P2T over cellular (POC) solution over an IMS application server. But the Saunalahti contract is the first announced convergence contract under Nokia's belt.

Nortel Networks also was touting IMS at Supercomm, primarily outlining the ways different types of service providers are approaching the architecture and what it means for them. Alan Stoddard, Nortel's general manager of converged multimedia solutions, said vendors must recognize that wireline, wireless and cable providers each have different goals and expectations for the technology. Wireless carriers are very focused on applications like P2T but aren't necessarily looking to overhaul their networks entirely.

“They want to add on certain key elements, like SIP application servers, that will allow them to deploy those applications quickly — but a full IMS implementation, changing the fundamental nature of their network, may not be in their immediate strategic outlooks,” Stoddard said.

Wireline carriers, meanwhile, are more open to the idea of a sea-change approach to the way their networks operate. IP services and VoIP are rapidly changing the nature of their businesses, and unless they're willing to embrace a next-generation architecture focused on services instead of access, they'll find themselves left behind.

“They have to look at fundamentals to change in their networks, not just a 12-month payout,” Stoddard said. “They're looking to re-architect their networks for the long term.”

Stoddard pointed out that while IMS was originally proposed as a wireless technology backed by the 3GPP, there has been a lot of momentum from the wireline operators of late, resulting in numerous similar but slightly different standards: the 3GPP standard for wireless operators, and ETSI's TISPAN standard for wireline operators. Stoddard said he believes the 3GPP spec will emerge as the dominant one, simply because it is further along, and IMS has gained the most traction among wireless operators so far.

“There's more a risk in the wireline space so the operators will go their own way,” Stoddard said. “BT has already done it. Their deployment is based on IMS principles, but make no mistake — it's distinctly BT.”

For its part, Ericsson echoed the sentiment that IMS is about applications — while also disputing the notion that some carriers are not ready for IMS and what it entails.

“There is not hesitance,” said Oscar Gestblom, strategic marketing manager for Ericsson. “What you're seeing is people being bold or not being bold about what they're doing in the market. There's a handful of guys who just aren't embracing it yet — the cable guys, for example.”

Ericsson's philosophy also is that IMS is about eliminating proprietary network stovepipes and creating service flexibility for carriers — of putting formerly vertical solutions into a horizontal base to make them more broadly applicable, while also addressing issues of scalability. Gestblom said the applications that will emerge from IMS implementation efforts — P2T, presence, image sharing — will be of particular appeal to a younger audience. “Age is important — young people like these services,” he said. “If we could roll the clock forward, I think we'd see collaborative applications and interactive applications being the most prevalent.”

In the end, most vendors at Supercomm agreed that IMS is about giving service providers of all types more opportunities to get their applications strategies right — or to adapt it without high cost if they don't get it right the first time. “Some people say IMS makes it cheaper to fail,” Gestblom said.

“Carriers are clearly trying to figure out the next applications, and they don't know,” said Tekelec's Eisler. “You can't find the next killer app. You have to give them the opportunity to miss a lot. You have to give the carriers a chance to miss five times and hit on the sixth.”

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With additional reporting by Kevin Fitchard