By: Sid Pachauri

Sid Pachauri — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:49:10 +0000

Can someone help me with a more detailed understanding of the potential IMS applications? What are some of these applications besides PTT and VoIP, that we are likely to see being rolled out in the near future?

By: Jeroen van Bemmel

Jeroen van Bemmel — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:35:24 +0000

Couple of points
1) IMS is valuable to operators not “because it is IMS”, but because it is an open, agreed upon standards based architecture that operators across the globe are adopting. “A standard” is better than “no standard”, what alternative is there?
2) You can make P2P applications on top of IMS, there is nothing that forces you to “put intelligence in the network”. IMS centralizes subscriber authentication, but not necessarily service logic

By: Paul Golding

Paul Golding — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:21:31 +0000

IMS brings the benefits of IP to the signalling (i.e. control) plane for P2P services. It makes developing new P2P services easier and more cost effective than trying to do so with legacy platforms. SDPs can provide a useful bridge between IMS and legacy systems, but I don’t think they otherwise add any value.
It would be far easier to rollout new network services with an all IMS network, especially if it were used to control voice calls (which it won’t be for some time, because they will remain circuit-switched).
One example is that making a call to a number could be used to trigger any service related to the number being dialled. This could be used to trigger contextual advertising and so on.
Another example is that it would be easy to offer users a service to record phone conversations and then access them per number in future.
Visual voicemail, like the iPhone has, would be easier to develop using IMS.
Making calls directly into a voicemail box would be easier to develop using IMS.
This is all because triggering events from IMS (i.e. SIP) is incredibly easy and then developing an app using something like SIP servlets is a no-brainer. I feel confident that I could develop all the above apps in my lunchbreak, whereas if you were to ask me to do the same via today’s SS7 networks etc, I would rather go spend all that time, money and effort to create a virtual world where we can all live and pretend that Telco legacy doesn’t exist
The problem is that any of the above services – and there are tons more just with voice alone – don’t have a proven business model that supports migration to IMS just to gain these benefits.
Furthermore, the nature of the telcom network – even with IMS – is such that a guy in his garage with a SIP servlet SDK isn’t going to bother to develop an app. Hence, the people – i.e. massive global community of clever developers – who should really be answering the question ‘where are all the IMS apps’ aren’t in the picture. They’re not even interested. A few IMS hopefuls are battling away wasting tons of cash to develop apps that don’t stand a chance of hitting critical mass, especially with the lack of IMS handsets!

Comments on: Where are the IMS applications?

By: Sid Pachauri

By: Jeroen van Bemmel

By: Paul Golding