IMS-The Best Solution for Quadruple Play

By Manuel Vexler
To answer these questions, we first should agree that today’s wireline, wireless or cable Internet services are running on what is called a ‘best effort of service delivery.’ In other words, there is no mechanism to implement, control and deliver the end-to-end quality of services demanded by VoIP, video streaming, video conferencing and Fixed-Mobile Convergence. No, we are not saying that any, or all of these services cannot be delivered over the current packet network. The issue is however, that the best effort network operational cost is increased by the cost of IP traffic engineering, load balancing and customer support to handle complains about service performance. IMS provides a framework for implementing the much needed Quality of Service (QoS) for residential and business customers. Nowhere is this need more apparent than in the implementation of Quadruple Play services, delivering high speed internet, voice, video and wireless mobility in a single convenient package. There is much agreement between analysts, marketers and the public at large that such premium services will increase customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and increase convenience in having a single point of contact for all services.

We tend to think of Quadruple Play as a service which is offered by the vertically integrated companies such as at&t and Verizon in the US. However, other segment of the service providers industries are following the same business model. First, not all telecom companies have access to all technologies, hence they need to form alliances in order to put together the Quadruple Play service offering. For example, many independent services providers don’t have both a fixed and a cellular business. The same is applicable to the cable companies. Not long ago, Advance/Newhouse Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable (the ‘Quartet’ ) started a joint venture with Sprint Nextel. A $200M cash fund was created for the development of converged services, national marketing initiatives and back office-integration. The addressable market is estimated at 41 million customers for cable companies and 46 million wireless subscribers from Sprint Nextel’s. Among other services announced we note: integrated voice mail for mobile and fix voice services, wireless and cable joint email account, streaming video services to the wireless handset across Sprint’s EV-DO wireless data network, and unified billing.

The connection between the joint venture and IMS is quite direct. Sprint will have to standardize on the network interfaces, otherwise the company will have to manage four separate IP networks with different interconnection technologies and interfaces. This is where IP Multimedia Subsystem, or IMS comes handy. With IMS Sprint will have to provide only one type of interface. Moreover these interfaces are already being tested for interoperability by the IMS Forum, in its IMS Plugfest™ events, hence multiple vendors can demonstrate their interoperability even before the services are rolled out.

Rich Tehrani’s interview with Sprint’s Tony Krueck, VP of Product Development is a good example of how Sprint is using IMS as a strategic technology. For instance Tony comments on the question of IMS Plans by saying. “initially, even before the IMS hype got started… we utilized a lot of the pieces of the IMS standard before they were even blocked out — honestly, because it was cheaper. So, instead of building the applications for multiple networks, it was considerably cheaper to build them using a single set of applications that could interface back with the multiple types of access and networks that people would be utilizing.”

In other words Sprint has already implemented an IMS architecture a few years back.

On the cable side, CableLabs™ has issued in 2006 an IMS set of specifications as part of Packet Cable 2.0. With these specifications, cable companies are now able to provide standardized interfaces for multimedia services, and to make the interconnection between any of the cable networks and Sprint cost effective, and consistent in delivering the much needed quality of services.

So, to answer the question, IMS is not years away, and the business case has been already proven by Sprint and the four cable companies forming the join venture to deliver Quadruple Play services to millions and millions of customers.

Manuel Vexler is the Chair of the Technical Working Group, IMS Forum ([email protected]).

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