Cingular will launch the first IMS-supported commercial service in the United States.
Discussions about IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) tend to begin with promises of the many converged applications and services that IMS network architecture will make possible. But when someone asks when such applications and services will be available to U.S. consumers, you can almost hear a pin drop.
However, AT&T’s Cingular Wireless looks ready to break the IMS ice with its Video Share deployment in the first half of this year. The carrier says Video Share lets subscribers in HSDPA territory initiate live 1-way video feeds while talking on the phone. Both users can initiate video feeds and once a feed is initiated, the handset switches on its speakerphone option so that the users can continue carrying on a voice conversation.
Cingular began showing off the service early this year during the Consumer Electronics Show using an IMS platform from Alcatel-Lucent, and the demos are continuing through this year’s CTIA Wireless 2007 show in Orlando.
Kelly Williams, technology strategist with Cingular, helped decipher the IMS waters as the carrier planned how it would deliver Video Share to subscribers. Williams explains that technologically speaking, Video Share could have been implemented a few different ways. “A couple of years ago, we viewed IMS as a technology of interest, but it was somewhat of an unknown. We were not early IMS evangelists, but we eventually decided to go with IMS for Video Share, in part because of its scalability, which offers a relatively low cost of entry as far as the network infrastructure costs are concerned.”
When asked about Cingular’s expected return on its IMS investment, Williams concedes that launching new services is not an exact science, and one service on its own may not bring in enough revenue to justify the cost of the infrastructure needed to launch the service. But bundles of services – that’s where the revenues start to really add up, according to Williams. And that’s also when IMS’ scalability comes into play.
“People have this misconception that IMS architecture is expensive to build into a network, but that’s not true,” Williams says. “IMS itself does not have to be in every central office in the network. You only have to have IP connectivity in it.”
Lessons Learned |
Nortel’s Top 10 lessons learned
from early IMS deployments: |
1. Sticking to the standards pays off.
2. Strong product validation reduces integration issues.
3. Successful deployment requires good planning.
4. Highly qualified on-site support is essential.
5. End-to-end testing tools make the difference.
6. New is good, but what about what’s here already?
7. VoIP and FMC are the stars of the show.
8. The more clients and devices supported, the better.
9. It takes a village…
10. Network convergence is really coming.
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For the time being, Cingular is solely using IMS products from Alcatel-Lucent, though Williams envisions other best-of-breed vendor products to eventually be part of the carrier’s IMS architecture.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Mike Cooper, vice president of marketing and strategy for the Convergence Business Group, says the vendor is starting to see more IMS sales from Tier 1 carriers. “More and more companies are seeing the value of IMS and how to make it part of their larger network infrastructure,” Cooper notes. “Companies have tried it out during trials, and now we’re at the beginning of the deployments phase.”
Networks are going through a competitive transformation, Cooper points out, with convergence of the access and core making new services possible, which is driving business transformations.
Cooper says service operators are expressing interest in dual-mode services that roam between Wi-Fi and cellular networks, but he also specifies that personalized services are getting a lot of attention, promising to deliver things such as a single phone book or contact list that users can tap into
from various access technologies, as well as targeted mobile ads that interact with users when they are in the vicinity of certain retail outlets.
“Carriers and other players are looking at IMS in very different ways,” Cooper comments. “They are all looking at the business value of what they want to do with it. For Tier 2 operators, the focus is on lower-cost mobile VoIP solutions that allow them to add next-generation applications over time.
The Tier 1 operators are looking for ways to deliver more data-centric services as opposed to voice.”
CONTRACTS ON TAP
To date, Nortel has not announced any big U.S. carrier contract wins, but the vendor’s IMS market development leader, Sita Lowman, believes Tier 1 carriers are in “deep decision mode” and will unleash IMS contracts later this year and early into next year.
“It may seem like the marketplace for IMS is pretty quiet, but it’s not quiet from our point of view,” Lowman says. “The market is moving from hype to decision right now. Many of the operators are doing one IMS RFP (request for proposal) across the core, and some do separate RFPs for wireline
and wireless. But they are all interested in interoperability across the core.”
Overall, Nortel’s IMS strategy relies heavily on its wireline VoIP expertise. Lowman notes that VoIP is the leading application driver for IMS, and insists that Nortel intends to leverage its wireline VoIP incumbency to rake in the contracts.
Still, smaller innovators are already making their marks in the IMS marketplace. One such company, Juniper Networks, touts its IP transport plane as an “intelligent, open and secure” delivery vehicle within IMS architecture. The company already has racked up supply deals with bigger vendors within the IMS ecosystem, and it expects the pace of IMS deployments to pick up later this year.
But Chandra Tekwani, Juniper’s vice president of mobility and convergence, points out that IMS technology’s presence in mobile network will probably look more like an evolution than a revolution. “Mobile operators want to adopt IMS to encourage new services and generate incremental revenue on top of existing voice services,” Tekwani says. “They want to increase ARPU while keeping their OPEX costs down. Fixed operators will use IMS to go mobile, and they probably have more revenue motivation than the wireless players.”
Indeed, wireline operators can’t be far behind Cingular’s planned IMS splash. Verizon made it clear with last summer’s Advances to IMS announcement that it plans to deploy an IMS-supported set of integrated services that make use of both its wireline and wireless networks.
Ranjan Mishra of Mercer Management Consulting sums up the industry’s push toward IMS architecture: “Whether it’s the cable guys, wireless or wireline operators, everyone’s networks are moving into IP-based territory. There’s no question about the need – that debate is over. The only question left is how soon.”