IMS not a pregnant pause, its real!

IMS( IP Multimedia System) has always been a fancy jargon used in the Telecom World. It’s been making headlines for years with no uptake. However, lately most of the operators have started rolling out IMS,LTE,and WIMAX technology into their network. So it’s good news to all those mobile applications that use wireless data networks for voice and messaging. I guess in couple of years, most of the operators in the world would have upgraded their network to all IP. So the future of wireless is going to be all IP. We will see a transitioning of signaling from SS7 to SIP world. The future is going to be great for SIP.

According to Infonetics Research Survey IMS Plans: Global Service Provider Survey, IMS technology is advancing from early-stage services to the next phase. With the introduction of IMS, there will be a fundamental shift from plain vanilla voice calling to rich multimedia calling( Video, Picture, message sharing ). Top three business drivers for deploying IMS include Opportunity to offer converged services, Availability of new applications/services and Network consolidation.

Here are some Highlights of the survey:
• 80% of Infonetics’ service provider respondents run fixed voice over IMS today or will by 2011, making fixed-line VoIP service the current mainstay of IMS deployments
• More than half of the service provider respondents plan to deploy video telephony and converged mobile/fixed-line services over the next 12–18 months
• The top three IMS applications operators expect to offer over the next two years are mobile-related: FMC, mobile presence, and mobile messaging

From a vendor standpoint, looks like Ericson is holding the fort. However, Huawei is making very good progress in terms of deployments and trials. Other big vendors in this space are Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, ZTE, Sonus networks and broadsoft.

So looks like the future of wireless is going to be very interesting. Hope we can see lot of innovation in this space. The barrier to entry for mobile applications would be minimal, which in turn would trigger innovation.