By Dan Blacharski

The attraction of the open, standards-based IMS architecture is that both mobile and fixed IP services can be brought together to provide for anytime access and, more importantly, to create an environment where a provider can easily add and customize a wide range of features without the usual extensive development costs and capital expenditures. In short, the promise of IMS will be that providers will be able to find new revenue sources, while reducing operating expenditures and capital expenditures at the same time—and not to mention, reducing customer churn as a result of being able to offer new conveniences and attractive bundles. A reduced time-to-market that will inevitably result from IMS technology and broad interoperability will also translate to a better bottom line for those telecoms that get in the game early.

The MultiService Forum’s global multi-vendor interoperability IP Multimedia System trial held in October, hosted by BT, KT, NTT, Verizon Communications, and Vodafone, tested and promoted interoperability between 26 vendors’ equipment. The event’s purpose was to create a test bed for equipment and services that will be used to build the next-generation platform. The event, held in five laboratories around the world, tested interoperability of IMS-based products from some of the most prominent players in the IMS realm. Although a group of 26 vendors certainly doesn’t represent the whole gamut of IMS participants, it’s a good cross-section and goes a long way to validate the MSF Release 3 Implementation Agreements, and the concept of universal compatibility that drives the development of IMS in general.

The concept that drives IMS, that telecom applications could use common, reusable components that could be shared between applications, and even between vendors, is the greatest attraction. The potential for saving money on operational costs is staggering. Lucent claims that IMS has the potential to reduce operational costs by 20 to 25 percent; IBM has a more optimistic figure of 38 percent. Lucent also notes that IMS will be able to reduce time-to-market for services by 20 percent or more. Furthermore, Bell Labs has shown that IMS applications will be able to flourish even with lower adoption rates, which means that it will be possible to offer several new services that would not otherwise be possible for economic reasons.

These sorts of interoperability tests are absolutely essential for all vendors that want to move to an IMS architecture on any level. An IMS migration represents a major overhaul. The end result is simpler operation and greater interoperability, but it’s in the getting there that the big money will be spent, and it’s in the transition that the inevitable shakeout will occur. While support is nearly universal for the framework, the initial costs involved in such a transition are still substantial, although once implemented, savings in capex and opex would ultimately provide some relief. But how soon those implementation expenses would pay for themselves is anybody’s guess. The costs alone will result in a shakeout along the way, as less-monied participants exhaust their resources before the market’s ready to accept what they have to offer.