In the convergence of telecoms, internet and media, each industry holds radically different mindsets and value propositions.

“Traditionally, the telecom business has used retail models - subscription-, content-, or usage-based pricing - to monetize network assets, while most profitable businesses on the internet have adopted the publishing/advertising model,” says Marc LeClerc, member of the Service Innovation group within Ericsson's Business Unit Multimedia.

The media world, on the other hand, is still reeling from declining sales due, at least in part, to pirating and file sharing.

LeClerc says that it will not be easy to link these three industries into a common value chain. But IMS could, if properly applied, provide a bridge between the media, telecom, and internet businesses.

“IMS can be used to build a converged user experience that leverages the best from the telecom, media, and internet worlds,” LeClerc says. “Telecoms offer mobility and tight identity management, the internet offers tools to efficiently make available and find content, and the media industry provides professionally produced text, music and video.”

IMS provides, among other things, services such as telephony, messaging, push-to-talk (pushing a message - text, voice or video - to a group of receivers), location-based services, presence and group management.

LeClerc says: “None of these functions are unique to IMS, but IMS is the only standard that covers all these areas for mobile-, fixed- and cable-based communications in the same framework. IMS provides end-to-end interoperability of key IMS capabilities across these networks.” IMS vendors are providing tools that allow IP network operators and application developers to explore business models beyond the predominantly advertising-based model of the internet.

“IMS is still a new technology in deployment, which means that there is a great opportunity for first movers to establish dominant positions in IMS-enabled services,” LeClerc says.

Telecoms, the media, and the internet have much to gain by working together to create a unified market for networked multimedia, and IMS provides a way of reaching this destination.

“Of course, IMS only provides a set of technical capabilities. The parties involved still need to set up the business relationships that will create a true win-win-win scenario,” LeClerc says.

Read more about IMS and its capacity to facilitate a convergence of the telecom, internet and media industries in Marc LeClerc's article “Bridging the gap”, in Ericsson Business Review 1, 2008, pages 24-28.