TMCnet News
IMS Week-in-Review for May 8-12, 2006By Mae Kowalke TMCnet Associate Editor This week, we bring you IP Multimedia Subsystem (News - Alert) (IMS) news from Pike & Fischer, In-Stat, Telcordia Technologies, Ericsson (News - Alert), Interoute, Sonus Networks (News - Alert), Time Warner Cable, Siemens Communications, Nortel, Alcatel (News - Alert), BT Group, Infonetics, and French operator Phone Systems and Network.
- - - - The week started off with two IMS-related reports by technology industry research firms.
Pike & Fischer predicted that by 2010, “IMS will consolidate all the varied communication devices of today into a single, multi-use handset.”
The report noted that dual-mode handsets are already appearing in commercial applications, and should be widely available later this year or early in 2007.
Lots of grand predictions have been made about IMS-based applications, and how they’ll take the telecom industry by storm, but carriers should be cautious about putting all their eggs in one basket this early in the game, warned In-Stat on Tuesday.
The high-tech market research firm predicted that IMS is unlikely to bring about a windfall of consumer spending anytime soon, in part because of rising content costs and service rate increase.
As a result, In-Stat said, carriers should retain PSTN revenue streams for as long as possible, and take other precautions to ease into the IMS market slowly as it develops.
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On Tuesday, IMS Magazine (a TMC publication), published two articles examining the future of IMS.
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Speaking of Ericsson, the company on Tuesday announced the launch of an IMS eco-system, part of Ericsson Mobility World’s developers program.
According to a newswire article, “The initiative is intended to accelerate the creation of new applications and services, to drive user demand for IMS enabled networks and to create further revenue opportunities for operators.”
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Midweek (on Wednesday), two IMS-related announcements came out from movers and shakers in the IMS market:
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Also on Wednesday, Nortel’s new CEO, Mike Zafirovski, mentioned IMS in his letter to the company’s shareholders.
Zafirovski noted that, among its other initiatives, Nortel has increased its investments in “promising areas, such as IMS, WiMAX, and IPTV (News - Alert).”
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Fixed-mobile convergence continued to be the name of the game on Thursday, when Alcatel was selected by BT Group to provide a communication system for its enterprise customers in the UK and Europe based on its IMS-compliant Corporate Mobility Manager.
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Major IMS-related news took a break on Thursday, but resumed Friday as Infonetics issued a report on predicted growth of the worldwide telecom/datacom equipment market (projected to reach $143.5 billion by 2009).
Infonetics predicted that next-generation voice and IMS, which currently represents 2 percent of the telecom/datacom market, will double to 4 percent by 2009, “driven by service provider migration to IMS and fixed-mobile convergence.”
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Finally, also on Friday, Phone Systems and Network, an alternative French operator, completed the transformation of its local and long distance network from TDM to VoIP, using elements of Alcatel’s IMS system.
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Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page.
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