The IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) specification has taken the industry by storm, promising access-agnostic multimedia services and fixed/mobile convergence. As IMS gains momentum, service providers are rapidly evaluating and converting network architectures in order to experience the cost savings, time-to-market and added capabilities that IMS promises. This session will take a closer look at IMS service infrastructure and components, providing an overview of the critical components that will deliver on IMS’ potential.

As the telecommunications industry evolves to embrace IMS, the delivery of unique service combinations requires a horizontal infrastructure that maximizes reusability and minimizes service delivery costs. This session will explore how service providers can develop next generation network convergence architectures that leverage IP and SIP based technologies to bridge mobile and fixed networks while preparing for the future of IMS.

IMS is becoming the architecture of choice for wireless and wireline convergence. Many service providers are tapping into its ability to offer advanced, revenue generating features, however, making advanced services accessible by broadband wireless users constitutes only half the equation for service provider success. The other half: VoIP and IP multimedia application platforms designed to attract developers and to host the true killer application: continuous, customer-responsive application innovation. The presenter will highlight the benefits of converged services and new applications and provide best-practice examples of how carriers have added voice services and advanced applications to their portfolio.

This session will educate the audience on IMS architecture and the benefits, challenges, and service deployment implications for this exciting service infrastructure technology. IMS architecture can support a large variety of diverse IP-based services including push-to-talk, color ring-back tones, speech activated dialing, unified messaging, media transcoding, and multimedia conferencing. Speakers will also discuss a pragmatic migration to IMS, including the benefits of integrating VoIP and mobile services, as well as the multiple services involved in true mobile call convergence.

It’s become clear that IMS will play a major role in the ongoing convergence of wireline and wireless networks. And operators who are keen to build next-generation services on all-IP infrastructures to save costs and increase the speed of service delivery are already taking their first steps to developing an IMS strategy. But what will the future hold? What challenges and opportunities will we face as we move towards convergence? Come to this session and find out.

This session will feature the industry’s leading experts in a round table discussion of where exactly we stand in regards to Service Provider IP Telephony. Attendees will come away with a true sense of what’s happening in the industry, with perspectives from the leading service providers exploring next-generation solutions, including the latest developments, a glimpse into the future, and some real-life implementation tales that you won’t want to miss. Attendees are encouraged to bring their questions, and we’ll bring the industry leaders who are best positioned to provide the answers.