Mobile Operators Move to IP; Sonus’ Trillionth Minute

By Rich Tehrani
Mobile phone services have a sort of split personality, with voice traveling over a circuit-switched system and other data traveling over packetized networks. For example, circuit-switched 2G GSM voice communications are often teamed with separate packet-switched 2.5G GPRS data communications, used to transport such things as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Internet content optimized for mobile devices, Multimedia Messaging (MMS), and other software applications that need to connect to the Internet.

Ideally, given the increasing adoption of the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) for packetized communications worldwide, 3G and upcoming 4G wireless phone systems should be truly “converged” in that they ought to be based on a single all-IP network founded on 3GPP standards. Such a system encompasses Voice-over-IP (VoIP) as just another form of realtime packet-based data running along with similarly packet-based multimedia services. With just one network with which to deal, infrastructure and operating costs are reduced.

Sure enough, a new Research Brief from ABI Research (News - Alert) entitled “Migrating Mobile Networks to IP”, reveals that network operators are planning to roll out all-IP networks beginning in the next two years.

One reason that 3G network operators are finally beginning to move in this direction is that 3G’s great potential rival — mobile WiMAX — will finally see deployment in the U.S. during 2008. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) can pour up to 12 megabits per second over a distance of several miles. Sprint Nextel is finally about to get this technology up and running in the U.S., with encouragement and help from WiMAX’s great champions, Intel and Motorola (News - Alert). Sprint Nextel estimates that up to 100 million people could potentially be in a position to subscribe to WiMAX services within two years, which is something that should worry 2.5G and 3G mobile network operators.

The only two carriers bigger than Sprint Nextel (News - Alert) — AT&T and Verizon Wireless — have their own wireless broadband agendas, with their roots in CDMA and GSM cellular technologies. Future networks may fully realize and utilize the 3GPP Release 8’s air interface, E-UTRA (Evolved UTRA) that in theory can be used over any IP network, including WiFi (News - Alert) and WiMAX, and even wired networks.

Not so coincidentally, perhaps, ABI Research reports that in early 2008 there will be full 3GPP standards for mobile networks enabling IP-based services deployment. Trials will occur in 2009, followed by actual deployments in 2010.

Adds ABI Research analyst Ian Cox (News - Alert), “This will enable service delivery platforms and IMS to be deployed in the network, streamlining operations and allowing new services to be introduced quickly”.

None of this will come as a surprise to IMS devotee Sonus Networks (News - Alert) (www.sonusnet.com) which announced in January 2008 that it had carried over one trillion minutes in aggregate over their IMS-ready network infrastructure equipment, 232 billion minutes of which were U.S. long distance minutes. Quoting from a report by iLocus entitled, “VoIP Minutes and Subscribers: 3Q07 Update,” 42.2 percent of all long distance IP-based voice traffic was carried Sonus’ network technology, three times the volume of its nearest competitor. Tabulations at the end of 2007 indicated that Sonus-based networks had carried 36 billion IP-voice minutes per month. International long distance minutes totaled 24.4 billion minutes, with Sonus capturing 21.6 percent.

Sonus also celebrated its 10th year of operation in 2007 by announcing a major series of developments, such as in-building femtocell wireless network technologies, the new Access 7.0 platform for residential networks, and the IMX 2.0 Multimedia Application Platform for pre-IMS and IMS-capable service providers.

Sonus’ first IMX centered on voice services. Now, this 2.0 release adds support for presence-related services along with an any-to-any messaging capability so that a text message sent from a mobile phone, for example, can successfully appear on anything from another mobile device to a PC or a TV. With the IMX 2.0, providers can create a service once using ordinary web-based APIs and tools such as the open source Eclipse IDE and Servlet API (instead of an unfamiliar, proprietary SDK), and then run the service anywhere in their respective networks.

Although the IMX 2.0 is optimized for Sonus’ network architecture, it can integrate into any IMS-based network.

Like the growth of VoIP itself, IMS is steadily making its way through the world’s network infrastructure. One day we’ll wake up and realize that exciting new and inexpensive services will be popping up all the time to curry our favor and dissuade us from abandoning our current phone company. The underlying basis for this will be IMS.

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