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IMS Magazine
February 2007 — Volume 2 / Number 2

Platform for Consumer and Enterprise Services: IMS and Fixed-Mobile Convergence

By David Hayward          

 

Market-watchers always look
at the up-and-coming generation of consumers to anticipate trends. In the 1990s, Generation X said, “I want my MTV.” It’s a new millennium, and Generation Y and Z are saying,“I want my MTV. . . on my smart phone.” That is what an IMS core network can do with fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) networks.
Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) is heading its way into your everyday life. Today, it’s second nature to hop onto a WiFi (News - Alert) connection at an airport, hotel, bar or coffee shop to web-browse and VPN back to your office.Market intelligence indicates that by the turn of the decade, it will be just as commonplace to hop from the cellular network to WiFi or WiMAX (News - Alert) to get high-bandwidth services with your smart phone or wireless PDA. That is what FMC does.

Because consumers expect “anywhere, anytime” access to information, entertainment
media and communications, carriers are being compelled to launch all kinds of non-IMS FMC services long before they have completed their core IMS infrastructures. This will drive carriers to build their core IMS infrastructure faster than ever.

That is what analysts, such as Graham Finnie of Heavy Reading, call the “carrier’s
dilemma.” Carriers must bow to market pressures by deploying new services and FMC even though this adds unwanted complexity (e.g., another “silo” to their “already-siloed” infrastructure). Ideally, they would rather wait until they have a single IMS core in place to make it all more efficient. But IMS is an evolutionary process, and “the business can’t wait.” (See Figure 1.)

Carriers that do not get in the FMC game now are likely to lose. That is what the data from analyst firm iLocus’ new report,“The Impact of FMC on World Telecommunications Markets,” indicates. According to iLocus, U.S. and U.K mobile operators will lose $3.3 billion and $1.3 billion a year by 2011, respectively, if they don’t offer FMC services. In other words, the technology for FMC is here, and if major carriers do not embrace FMC, someone else will do it and will take their customers with them!
Imagine the growth of FMC usage when mature FMC products and technologies are in place. Finally, FMC phones, IMS hand-over solutions and compelling FMC applications are coming out of the woodwork.





The FMC-IMS Connection
According to Stephen Hayes, Chairman, 3GPP Technical Specifications Group, IMS really did not have FMC in mind at
the start. It evolved. Indeed, IMS had been evolving to FMC since 2002.Hayes told the audience at last November’s IMS
Congress in Dallas conference that 3GPP IMS was originally a means for cellular operators to take advantage of higher
bandwidth and the growing prevalence of IP and to give operators more control over SIP. (See Figure 2.)

FMC: More than a “Can you hear me now?” Value Proposition
Using dual-mode GSM-WiFi mobile phones, UMA gives the user “a better signal” indoors (i.e., to make up for shoddy celltower
signals for voice). UMA gets high marks as a reliable mechanism for seamlessly handing off calls between wireless
and cellular networks. But VCC carries more weight with analysts as a viable handover technology for IMS. After all,VCC
is based on a SIP, the protocol for setting up sessions between the IMS core and user devices.

UMA may be a technology for carriers getting their feet wet in FMC, but if the long-term architectural goal for carriers is 3GPP IMS, then they have to keep their eyes on VCC. And because VCC is based on SIP, analysts favor it to become the mechanism for
multimedia (i.e., non-VoIP, SIP-based services) handover between cellular mobile and IP wireless networks.

Consumer Behavior Favors FMC and the Road to IMS
Take it from Time-Warner Cable (TWC), consumers want to “get their MTV” anywhere, anytime. As Mike Roudi, TWC’s VP and GM of Wireless Services, explained at last January’s FMC & Quadplay Conference in San Francisco,“Mobility will add punch to our existing service offerings, provide an opportunity for sustainable differentiation
and offer new revenue for growth.”

TWC’s consumer research suggests the growing demand for converged services.Here’s just a sample of what TWC 2005 consumer poll revealed:

• 85% want mobile access to home email.
• 78% want mobile DVR programming.
• 74% want mobile television.
• 78% want integrated voicemail.
• 74% want to receive mobile calls on the home phone.

TWC is paying attention. In 2005, TWC and Sprint (News - Alert) created a joint venture, enabling TWC to jump from triple play (fixed-line voice, TV and Internet access) to quadruple play (triple plus mobile phone service). In 2006, TWC announced a successful demonstration of fully integrated fixed-line, mobile and WiFi broadband technologies via IMSstandards to deliver FMC services.

At the time, Mike LaJoie, Chief Technology Officer at TWC told TMC (News - Alert) .net, “Rather than being limited in capabilities due to silos of network architectures, IMS promises a new world of seamless provisioning opportunities for broadband operators. This will include the ability of operators to rapidly and cost-effectively deploy highly personalized entertainment services.” As the cable giant sees it, FMC/IMS will “enhance and extend the inhome experience out-of-home.”

Basic Enterprise Convergence Opens the Door to IMS
Creating a mobile culture is critical to corporations’ strategies to survive and thrive in the global economy. FMC may be the “IMS Trojan horse” into the enterprise market — another trick in a carrier’s bag to enable “the mobile workforce.”

Carriers have figured this out, and they are leading enterprises from converged IP applications based on EV-DO up the bandwidth-revenue curve to FMC, blended voice/video/data (IMS) services and, eventually, 4G all-IP networks.

Carriers’ enterprise FMC playbooks look something like this:

• Offer IP PBX (News - Alert) services: save the enterprise money, customize services.
• Extend PBX services to mobile phones: improve productivity, throw out the sales force’s desk phone to save money.
• Deploy FMC on campus: improve in-building coverage.
• Unveil high-value, high-bandwidth IMS services over inbuilding

FMC (WiFi, Picocells) and then introduce wide-area FMC (WiMAX): enriched productivity services, such as video conferencing on smart phones.

As early as 2005, Sprint publicized their IMS intentions in the high tech media. And last year, as they continued to build their IMS
infrastructure, they introduced wireless (PBX) integration to hold their enterprise customers’ attention. Carriers, like Sprint, know that convergence can bring customers real value by “extending the office” to the mobile world, just as much as cable companies focus on “extending the home” to mobile consumers.With Sprint’s publicized $4 billion commitment to WiMAX, one might guess that FMC on grand scale is in their future.

Carriers’ IMS Imperatives and “New Last Mile”
IMS will go hand-in-hand with multi-access FMC, as Light Reading’s 2006 Study “IMS,What the Carriers Really Think” revealed. According to the survey, the top three factors driving carriers’ IMS deployment were as follows:

• The need to quickly launch new services.
• The need to deliver services that combine voice, data and video traffic.
• The need to converge fixed and mobile services.

If carriers intend to fulfill their customer’s dreams for rich media services “everywhere,” then they will have to deliver IMS services over a number of access networks: pico/femtocells,WiFi, WiMAX, 3G mobile, DSL and cable. To support roaming across this new
heterogeneous “last mile,” carriers will have to grapple with authentication mechanisms. secured access methods. bandwidth and QoS requirements. security models. and cost and complexity.

That will require new technologies and clever solutions as IMS continues to evolve.

David Hayward is the Director of Marketing for Reef Point Systems. For more information, visiting the company online at www.reefpoint.com.

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