The Birth of a New Network:

IMS, Convergence, and the Future of Fulfillment

Imagine you're driving across town and join a meeting via conference bridge from your mobile phone. Still on the call when you reach your office, the battery on your mobile fading fast, you go off-hook on your PSTN landline phone, push a key sequence, and seamlessly switch handsets - and networks - mid-sentence. A moment later, with a point and click of your laptop, you join the video portion of the conference and you're virtually there.

Welcome to the world of convergence. Not the sexiest example, admittedly,but one that illustrates true convergence and true convenience. More than just a single bill and service bundles, true convergence breaks down the technical barriers between traditionally discrete communications spheres. And it enables the transparent interaction and cooperation of services across those spheres - wireline and wireless, legacy and next-gen, voice and data.

"…enlightened customers are coming to expect any service, any place, any time, on any device."

Communications service providers (CSPs) are not entirely there yet, but they're getting close, propelled largely by tech-savvy consumers and a red-hot consumer electronics market. With telecommunications services rapidly enlightened customers are coming to expect any service, any place, any time, on any device. They want presence and location services, in-session "follow me," push-to-talk and push-to-see, multi-party conference and collaboration, shared video, unified messaging and integrated contacts - all at their fingertips, regardless of how it gets there and regardless of where "there" is.

Putting these services continually within reach - at the ready to be mixed, matched, and tailored - benefits not only subscribers. It can ultimately mean stickier offerings and more revenue, more quickly, for the CSP. These potential gains for both customer and provider explain, at least in part, the industry buzz surrounding IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which is hailed to be a key enabler of network convergence and the multimedia services revolution.

IMS and "Network vs. Service"
IMS is a unifying technology which, proponents believe, will help operators migrate to a carrier-grade "all IP" world. Originally defined for 3G wireless networks by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), IMS architectural concepts are now being embraced by other industry bodies to address wireline needs and applications. The IMS architecture and standards provide dynamic routing and session control (including per-session management of bandwidth, QoS, latency, etc.) that spans bearer technologies. As such, IMS has the potential to enable revenue-rich, access-agnostic multimedia services over fixed or wireless networks, with seamless hand-off in between. Such an integrated architecture and such "open borders" between traditionally distinct worlds promise to speed the rollout of new services, features and applications - a key requirement in today's competitive and customer-controlled communications market.

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