3GSM IMS Steeplechase

By Ronald Gruia      

This year’s 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona confirmed once more the emergence of IMS as a key
architecture for service providers to evolve their networks. The largest wireless show in the world attracted more than 55,000 visitors, breaking all records and establishing itself as one of the marquee global wireless events. Despite the fact that some industry pundits noticed that on this
year’s edition of the 3GSM show there was no dominant single technology theme, there were definitely a few key takeaways that will be helpful to the IMS cause,
namely the following:

1. — 3G ramp-up: At 3GSM, operators, network equipment vendors and other participants in the value chain alike pointed out the accelerating mobile data usage as the footprint of 3G and 3G+ (W-CDMA, EV-DO, HSDPA) networks expands worldwide. For wireless operators, the offering of a wide range of multimedia and converged services entails more bandwidth than what 2.5G networks can currently support.Therefore, IMS rollouts will be closely related to the deployment of 3G (W-CDMA on the GSM track or EV-DO on the CDMA track), so a wider penetration of 3G is definitely a positive for IMS.

2.— Deployment news: While observers felt that IMS did not quite make the same splash as in 2006, there were some announcements about operators choosing to embark on the IMS path.One such example is Softbank, which bought Vodafone KK in Japan last year.During the 2006 GSM show, Vodafone had announced the two winners of its company-wide IMS RFP (namely Ericsson (News - Alert) and Nokia).Any of the Vodafone companies around the globe opting to deploy IMS will have to hold its own mini RFP and pick between these two vendors.The first one to do so was Vodafone KK (which chose Ericsson), but it was encouraging to see that a year later, now operating under the Softbank banner, the company still chose to continue its IMS build-out and picked Ericsson as the supplier of the infrastructure, system integration and support services.The first IMS services to be introduced were Circle Talk (a push-to-talk application) and HotStatus (a presence and group list management service). Softbank’s IMS network went live late last year, and the early indicators are that the number of subscribers is growing.There were other tender announcements for future deployments as well, including Telefónica, which picked Alcatel (News - Alert) -Lucent to deliver presence-based IMS convergent multimedia services (including IM, click-to-call, push-to-talk and push-to-view, among others).Alcatel-Lucent will provide its IMS Presence Server, the integration in Telefónica’s core network and the maintenance services.

3. — Enterprise IMS: The majority of carriers that have chosen IMS are integrated operators with wireline and wireless networks.Not surprisingly, they typically elected to go along the fixed path to launch their initial IMS applications (such as IP Centrex at TDC in Denmark and residential telephony with Telefónica in Spain).Why the emphasis on wireline services? Because on the fixed side, these operators do not have the same obstacles that they are faced with on the mobile side (namely bandwidth, QoS and handset availability). As far as wireline IMS applications go, the enterprise will play a significant role in the
future, with more rollouts of IP Centrex (hosted IP telephony). One noteworthy development at 3GSM was the Ericsson announcement of its Enterprise Mobility Gateway, which will provide mobile voice and data services on both 2G/3G handsets and dual-mode (2G/3G and WiFi (News - Alert) -enabled) devices.The SIP-based offering can be implemented as a CPE type deployment (for any PBX system supporting Q.SIG) or alternatively integrated in a hosted IP telephony IMS environment. On another front, the official ratification of the Avaya (News - Alert) acquisition of Ubiquity Software (widely expected after the initial announcement in January) came at the end of 3GSM.This transaction also signals that the value proposition of a horizontalized SOA-enabled architecture and a rapid service creation environment is also getting better traction in the enterprise.

Taking a stroll down the main alley in the massive Fira de Barcelona complex,          where the 3GSM show was held during the past couple of years.The rule of thumb       is to allow 15 minutes between appointments, as walking from one booth to another    (particularly if they are on different halls) can take quite some time. (Photo by    Ronald Gruia.)

4. — SS7-to-SIGTRAN migration well under way: another indicator that operators are beginning to gradually transition to
NGN architectures such as IMS is the migration on the signaling front (from SS7 to SIGTRAN, or SS7 over IP). Tekelec (News - Alert) has been one of the vendors at the forefront of that transformation and announced that KPN had also picked its next-gen signaling solution (adding to a flurry of recent similar wins in this area, including T-Mobile (News - Alert) Germany and TelstraClear in New Zealand).Unlike network equipment vendors, which position the central office switch as the optimal point from which the network should evolve,Tekelec highlights signaling as the starting point of the evolution of the network, leveraging its expertise in this area.The reality is that most pragmatic carriers will first utilize as much as possible their existing SS7 signaling infrastructure prior to investing in SIP/IMS networks.Under this scenario, the first step is the migration towards SIGTRAN, followed then by the addition of other transitional technologies to help carriers bridge IN and IMS applications and the deployment of core IMS infrastructure elements (such as the CSCF and SIP application servers).Hence, an increase in the uptake of SIGTRAN activity can be yet another positive indicator for IMS.

5. — IMS Clients and Handsets: the majority of wireless operators constantly mention that one big restraint for a higher
adoption of IMS is the limited availability of IMS handsets and clients.This was one area in which more developments
were expected, but this year’s 3GSM show confirmed that there has not been that much progress. Creating an IMS handset takes a lot more than simply putting a SIP stack on that phone.While there were some dual-mode models introduced (supporting SIP or
UMA), the market anxiously expects the launching of new models. On the client side, the issue is that organizations such as 3GPP and the OMA have only specified a few IMS client mandatory and optional primitives (ensuring compatibility with applications
such as PoC and VoIP-VCC, and enablers such as presence).The OMA has issued some provisions in its specification for PoC (push-to-talk application Version 1.0) and other IMS services, such as presence and group management. Perhaps one of the few
success stories in this area has been the Ecrio win at NTT DoCoMo (News - Alert) .The Japanese operator picked Ecrio’s IMS PoC client for its Push-to-Talk service, and some of these FOMA models were on display at 3GSM.The good news is that Ecrio (News - Alert) announced total shipments of 10 million of its clients on 25 different phone models from six different manufacturers. (For more details, please consult NTT DoCoMo’s 902i series web page at: www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/902i/) Another encouraging sign from 3GSM was that there were signs that a new Java API ( JSR281) is slowly emerging as a possible solution to the client problem.The key concept here is to enable either operators or third-party developers to write Java applets that leverage IMS capabilities.However, much work remains and it is not yet clear whether JSR281 will be answer.

While the IMS acronym might have not been as widely used at this year’s 3GSM as it was in 2006, a deeper inspection reveals that in fact there have been many positive indicators suggesting that the adoption of IMS technology is under way. Perhaps the smaller number of press releases containing the IMS buzzword is more of a hint that the technology has already passed through the first peak on its hype cycle and is now undergoing further refinements prior to becoming more widely deployed.

Ronald Gruia is Program Leader and Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan covering Emerging Communications Solutions. He can be reached at rgruia@frost.com.