IMS: a new spin on convergence: wireless and wireline carriers seek the "eBay" of flexible, responsive user experience

Telecommunications Americas, March, 2005 by Sean Buckley

But this is not just a wireless play, since wireline-only carriers such as MCI and BT can also use the IMS architecture to create services with reconfigurable components rapidly. Ian Stirrat, general manager for the UK incumbent 21st century network program, sees IMS as providing "reusable intelligent components" that can be used to design a range of services quickly and cost efficiently.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

James Verlare, IT advisory engineer for MCI, agreed: "We all hear about the magical services and which one is going to be the killer app. It's really this concept of what we call 'bringing it all together'.

"You have to have a consolidated architecture that allows you to develop services rapidly and bring them to market in a matter of weeks and months rather than weeks and years to support customers that want to bring these services together in a consolidated fashion," Verlare explained. "The beauty of IMS is that it's network-agnostic, so whether we need to be supportive of wireless or wireline customers, we can build it once and have that same service support subscribers across any access or transport."

--Sean Buckley

RELATED ARTICLE: Cable: Looking for Mobility

While the HFC network certainly has a lot of power to deliver multiple enhanced business and residential services, it does lack one common ingredient: mobility. So, it should be of no surprise that all large cable operators are considering entry into MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) relationships with wireless carriers.

While nothing is concrete, Time Warner has already begun talks with Sprint PCS to establish an MVNO relationship--and a trial cellular phone service this year. Along with this MVNO partnership, a group of cable companies including Time Warner, Comcast, Cox and Charter have developed a consortium to provide wireless services to their customers.

But the cable MSO's desire for wireless goes far beyond just a simple quadruple play billing bundle. While it's still in its formative stage, many industry pundits point out that IMS could play a role in the cable network as a bridge to move not only calls but also compelling features between their VoIP networks and the cellular network.

Using PacketCable as a starting point, a focus group within CableLabs is said to be examining various options to integrate the PacketCable standard with cellular and wireless data networks. Part of the group's analysis is focused on examining various integration issues such as cellular roaming, signaling protocols, QoS and back office integration. Similar to the cellular industry's drive to have dual mode phones that can roam between Wi-Fi and cellular networks, cable is looking at a similar plan to maintain service continuity across wireless and cable networks.

One of the common elements that could bridge the gap between the cellular and cable worlds is the adoption of the SIP protocol. This requires leveraging it between the wired cable world and mobile world. So far, CableLabs has integrated SIP into PCMM (packet cable multimedia), a specification that enables cable MSOs to offer additional IP services, such as SIP-based voice services, gaming and video telephony, with guaranteed QoS. In addition to dealing with various cellular issues, CableLabs members are considering developing an upgrade to the PacketCable architecture and/or new cable telezend-to-end IP network, particularly a distributed architecture.