Industry watchers also seem convinced that the future role of IMS is assured. For example, analyst firm Yankee Group has said, "In the next 18 months, carriers will implement IMS platforms largely for specific applications, creating beachheads for its market penetration. Beyond that, IMS will become a standard service environment for wireless operators and for creating converged mobile and fixed services."

Ericsson is leading the field in IMS technology, expertise and business-focused services and solutions, and intends to capitalize on that position as fixed and mobile operators around the world develop and roll out multimedia services.

In essence, the IMS solution helps bring Internet applications such as presence, buddy lists and peer-to-peer communications into the telecom world. Its implementation will signal a fundamental shift in the way telecom services are created and delivered, and will help bring about true fixed–mobile convergence for the next wave of multimedia applications.

The IMS standard has been defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP/3GPP2) and is being embraced by other standards bodies including ETSI/TISPAN for addition of more wireline-centric issues. It enables operators to deliver multimedia services based on IP and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which provides the standard signalling mechanism for all these services and is used to set up the different communication sessions.

IMS not only enables new IP-based multimedia communication services, it also enriches existing circuit-switched services. Over time, it will enable the same set of services to be available to users across different access networks and device types, with consistent look and feel and ease of use.

The standard supports multiple access types – including GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WCDMA, CDMA2000, wireline broadband access and wireless LAN. Furthermore, IMS can function in an access-aware network, so that services are adapted to the users’ current access network and bearer characteristics. It ensures that the calling and called parties service preferences interact to provide the best common experience for each session.

What does IMS mean for users?

Users today are more individualistic, independent, informed and involved than ever before, and they welcome services that appeal to their emotions as well as their practical needs. Multimedia communications services have a key role to play in meeting users’ need to ‘close the gap’ between them – by making the communications experience much more like interacting face-to-face. IMS enables both exciting new multimedia services and enhancements to existing services that make them more personalized and immediate.

IMS-based services enable communications in a variety of modes – including voice, text, pictures and video, or any combination of these – in a highly personal and controlled way. IMS will help provide a seamless, consistent experience across multiple access technologies, devices and locations – whether wireline or wireless; narrowband, wideband or broadband; business or personal. It also enables subscribers to manage their accessibility – or their ’presence’ – better, so that they can control how, where, when and by whom they can be reached. (Ericsson ConsumerLab research has shown that users value simply being able to see in advance who they can contact, and how.)

One early example of an IMS-based service is the Push to Talk over Cellular (PoC) standard service that enables users to get in touch with individuals or predefined groups of users at the push of a button on their mobile handsets. Presence – seeing in advance who is available for a call – is an integral part of such push to talk services. The implementation of IMS-based PoC-standard push to talk will also enable handset diversity and reduce restrictions on available contacts (through interoperability).

Another interesting application that will drive revenue in the enterprise market is IP Centrex, also known as a virtual hosted PBX solution. Combining IMS multimedia services with IP Centrex can create advanced collaboration services suitable for targeting enterprises of all sizes. The combined solution will host a complete set of personal and group services, with the addition of multimedia support like video communication, conferencing, collaboration, presence management, instant messaging, integration with office Personal Information Management (PIM) systems and support for remote workers.

First-mover advantage

Ericsson is establishing a strong lead in the IMS market. While several vendors have announced their intention to develop IMS-based products, Ericsson is already shipping solutions based on the IMS architecture. Ericsson already has IMS deployments and trials with 25 fixed and mobile operators, for services such as Push to Talk over Cellular (PoC), Combinational Services, IP Telephony and IP Centrex.

As market analysts Current Analysis stated in a recent report, following a briefing from Ericsson, “Ericsson is demonstrating that it has established an early lead in the still emerging IMS market. The public airing of the company's product plans and roadmap provide evidence that the company is further advanced than most – if not all – competitors in the wireline space.

"Ericsson has demonstrated that it understands that the real opportunity in the IMS infrastructure market is not in the delivery of the piece parts of the infrastructure but in the consistent delivery of new applications and professional services.

"Ericsson is focusing much of its IMS strategy on service creation and professional services. Considering that service providers, especially wireline service providers, are still feeling their way around the IMS architecture, professional services are likely to play an important role in wireline/wireless convergence."