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Initial Plans Announced for GMI 2008
FREMONT, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Building on the success of GMI 2006, the MultiService Forum (MSF) today announced plans for GMI 2008, to be held Q4/2008. Providing a global worldwide multi-vendor interoperability test environment for end-to-end practical network deployment, GMI2008 will bring together product implementations supporting the MSF Release 4 architecture. Interoperability of critical NGN elements will be verified in practical scenarios supporting IMS-based fixed/mobile convergence. Specific service capabilities such as Quality of Service (QoS), Location Management, IPTV and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) will be included to validate key NGN concepts.
"GMI 2006 convinced us of the growing maturity of IMS as a basis for fixed/mobile convergence," commented Roger Ward, Office of the CTO, BT Group and President of the MSF. "Of course, for commercial large scale network implementations, the devil is always in the details and it is here that the MSF continues to provide a significant opportunity for industry collaboration as the technology continues to mature. We now have not only the next of our successful GMI programs based on major carrier host sites to look forward to, but also our NGN Interoperability permanent test bed based at UNH - IOL, and our recently launched Certification Program in conjunction with Iometrix."
GMI 2008 will verify selected high-value services, such as IPTV, that can take advantage of IMS. The MSF plans to test IPTV service integration and interoperability during GMI 2008 to help assess the maturity of existing IPTV solutions and identify gaps in the current industry standards.
Jack Douglass, Director of Video Technology at Spirent Communications stated, "A comprehensive system for analyzing IPTV quality should take into account both video and audio quality and should have a close correlation to perceptual quality. It is essential that the system measure IP network impairments, content metrics and ETSI TR101-290 parameters and include these attributes when calculating the video and audio MOS scores."
GMI 2008 also enhances the testing of QoS control for multi-service IP networks serving both fixed and mobile clients. In addition, it will demonstrate important service enablers such as "location" information. The architecture and protocol interfaces described by MSF Implementation Agreements (IAs) are based on current work by standards organizations such as 3GPP, ATIS, ETSI TISPAN and ITU-T. The architecture supports a range of business models to reflect the reality facing carriers today.
Finally, GMI 2008 will test the interoperability of a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) gateway with the core IMS capability. This will combine the rapid service creation environment of the Internet with the service guarantees provided by an IMS infrastructure. GMI 2008 will test specific services, but the primary intent is to validate the service enablers that will unleash the creativity of web services developers.
About GMI 2008
GMI 2008 - the Global MSF Interoperability event - will link major carrier labs on three continents in a major demonstration of multi-vendor interoperability between a significant number of NGN elements supporting Implementation Agreements developed in support of the MSF Release 4 Architecture and practical deployment scenarios of interest to major carriers.
About MSF
The MultiService Forum (MSF) is a global association of service providers, system suppliers and test equipment vendors committed to developing and promoting open-architecture, multiservice Next Generation Networks.
Founded in 1998, the MSF is an open-membership organization comprised of the world's leading telecommunications companies.
The MSF's activities include developing Implementation Agreements, promoting worldwide compatibility and interoperability of network elements, and encouraging input to appropriate national and international standards bodies.
http://www.msforum.org/
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