Everything you want to know about IMS, at a price

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 17 September 2006 11:17

Opinion and Analysis

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is one of the most important developments in telecommunications technology in recent years, so the IMS Forum should be congratulated for producing a set of FAQs on IMS in " the overwhelming demand for clarity in regard to this emerging standard." However, there is a catch.

IMS, conceived by the 3G standards body 3GPP as an application enabling architecture, was adopted by the fixed network world and is now seen as a key to enabling the convergence of fixed and mobile networks. According to the pre-amble of a Heavy Reading report on IMS in July 2005, "Many vendors and service providers now see IMS as the single most important telecom technology development of this decade."

Now, the IMS Forum has produced what it claims to be "the Industry's first IMS 'Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ) reference document," IMS Technology: Driving IP Convergence, describing it as "a direct response to the overwhelming demand for clarity in regard to this emerging standard."

Topics addressed include: What are the consumer benefits of IMS? What are the major IMS applications? Who is who in service providers for IMS? How do global communication plans fit with IMS? How does Broadband (Cable, DSL, fibre, Satellite Broadband) fit with IMS? How does Wireless and Mobility (WiFi, WISP, GSM, CDMA, 3G, WiMax) fit with IMS? How is BSS/OSS (Billing, Network Management, Provisioning, Operations) defined for IMS?

It all sounds very useful, but there is just one small problem. Even though the organisation lists as one of its goals "Evangelising to promote the uptake in adoption of IMS" the FA document available only to members and fees start at $US3500 for organisations with less than $US10 million in revenue. I emailed the organisation asking why they were being so restrictive but have yet to receive a response

Never mind the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) has kindly produced and made freely available "A Brief Introduction to IMS". .

According to the preamble, it  "provides a starting point with a basic functional overview explaining the various layers of IMS and provides an example of how IMS is different from what we have had in the past." If you need a quick overview, it's well worth a read.


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