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Fixed/Mobile Convergence and IMS
Look for fixed-mobile convergence vendors to be avidly trying to shed a positive light on the industry after news earlier this month that Deutsche Telekom shut down its dual-mode SIP-based WiFi/GSM offering, called T-One, in Germany after attracting fewer than 10,000 subscribers since last August. One positive development that we keep hearing about is femtocells—small cellular base stations designed for residential environments--and we’re intrigued by the concept. Kineto Wireless this week announced that NEC will integrate Kineto’s UMA Network Controller into NEC’s Home Gateway Solution and we expect other femtocell news to crop up next week at CTIA.
On the IMS front, we expect to hear some buzz about IMS messaging as carriers try to figure out how to seamlessly transmit messages between their 2G and 3G networks. Steve French, senior manager of product marketing at Tekelec’s network signaling group, said that he has seen some recent operator request for proposals looking for IMS messaging gateways. Operators are also trying to figure out how to leverage existing equipment and still transition to IMS. They’ll be looking for solutions next week that will solve this problem.
Also, look for Intellinet to be talking about the results of its IMS diameter interoperability event. The event took place in early February and 14 companies participated in it. According to Arun Handa, CTO of Intellinet, the goal was to make sure there was complete interoperability between the different diameter implementations. “We created a very vendor-neutral test environment,” Handa said. -Sue
Comments
Posted by bobic | March 19, 2008 - 2:16am
No, really inherently the IMS architecture is sound, and represents advantages on paper. And while I see merit from an architecture perspective, I do agree that it is ultimately highly carrier specific based upon their service objectives. I am spearheading alot of trial work from both an FMC as well as an IMS perspective, and with an open mind I will uncover the advantages and disadvantages. To a large extent my feeling is that IMS is a bit ahead of its time currently (are carriers currently developing solutions based upon complex client-side SW and multi-app server interactions? I think not).
However, that being said I am very keen to understand how the service triggering mechansim can function to allow the core to determine how to allow, invoke and combine various services. These service triggers are really the "special sauce" in IMS that everyone talks about, but no one gets into any detail which is required beyond a paper evaluation. The ability to trigger applications should go well beyond where the call or session is originated. That is, if a user is on the IP network, or in an FMC application or a PSTN endpoint the core network should allow an application to do its job. This provides that "seamless" experience that is the access agnostic marketing speak we all hear about.dvd download
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