Metaswitch has used a lot of references to kings and monarchs in its buildup to its new multimedia telephony portfolio. Perhaps Mobile World Forum 2011 will be remembered as the coronation for the company's new Accession product line.

At the Metaswitch Forum in October 2011, the company used the code name "Jupiter" when discussing its (then) future plans for an integrated approach to IP communications software for service providers extending from the network core out to the edge designed to provide integrated call and communications handing between mobile and wireline domains.   In Roman mythology, Jupiter is the name of the king of the gods as well as the god of sky and thunder.

The word accession refers to the day a monarch succeeds to the throne, as Metaswitch executives were keen to point out to this Yank reporter in an initial briefing discussing the new portfolio.  But there are also some colorful advertising images of a guy in a coat and tie running around with a flaming sword that just begs for a Middle Earth or Peter Grant reference.

Regardless of the symbolism, Accession is a fresh model for handling voice telephony and communications. Under immersive multimedia telephony (IMT), as Metaswitch calls it, users can move a conversation or session freely between devices and take advantage of local network connectivity or handset capabilities. Back in Ye Olden Days, we would have called this fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), but FMC was designed solely around voice, with a bunch of hacked up solutions designed to paste together cellular phone calling with Wi-Fi networks and wireline numbers.

IMT recognizes there are numerous devices in the mobile and wireline world and enables users to share content between those devices.  You can start a call on a smartphone on a 3G network, transfer it to VoIP over Wi-Fi when you get into the office, move it to a speaker phone and/or pull a call to a tablet; you can even add video if you want to get fancy.

Backing all of this seamless passing are a number of technologies in the core network and on the client side to smooth and optimize call handoff, as well as audio and video quality on data RF networks (i.e., LTE (News - Alert) and Wi-Fi). It becomes clear why Metaswitch boasts of putting more money into soft client development; it has to so it can provide a seamless, integrated experience.

Playing to OTT threats and RCS/RCS-e s, mobile content sharing (MCS) is the other part of the Accession story, with both a personal and a business story.  Metaswitch's Thrutu (News - Alert) project best illustrates how this works. Two people on a phone call can use a pop-up window to share pictures, location, links, map directions, play games, and so on. The business hook comes in when a customer calls into a MCS-enabled phone number, enabling a company to provide directions, a button to hop the auto attendant in a call queue and speak directly to a real person in customer service, and provide other information.

Of course, service providers are able to either plug in all this stuff themselves or tap into a Metaswitch-managed cloud to get Accession services. At the Tier 1 level, AT&T (News - Alert) is very gung-ho on using outsourcing rather than having to build and manage everything from scratch.  

Regardless of how it is delivered, Accession is one of the more promising concepts to appear in the IP communications world in a while. It and Metaswitch bear watching over the months to come.