fixed mobile convergence

For as long as I can remember, telecom vendors such as Nortel and Alcatel Lucent have been promoting the Internet Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as the convergence platform for IP multimedia services for wireless and also for wired line networks. Each year at the CTIA Wireless event, these vendors would list the many potential services that IMS would enable such as presence, push-to-talk, instant messenging, and video call. Service providers also eagerly parlay IMS as a way to converge their service delivery platforms and to deliver “rich” IP multimedia services that end users would actually want and pay for. Well, this year at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando, the industry seemed to finally got tired of the promises of limitless IMS application possibilities and pretty much stopped talking about IMS. Instead of positioning fixed-mobile convergence and next generation convergence services such as push-to-talk, some rather dull terms are being used such as “IP enabling IN services” and “business transformation”.

The acquisition of YouTube by Google must have also shifted the focus of the telecom industry as well. At the CTIA show, there clearly is much greater emphasis on delivering video over fixed and wireless networks. Of course the technology that service providers use to deliver such a service involves components of the IMS framework. But at least this time round, vendors and service providers are starting with the application rather than the application framework.