Mobile & Wireless

VON Fall 2006: Let’s Get Physical

MultiService Forum Debuts Release 3 Architecture Spec

by Sean Buckley

Only a few short years ago, IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) was nothing more than a formative concept in the service provider’s eye. Fast- forward to 2006, and you would be hard pressed to find a service provider not in the process of implementing an IMS strategy.

However, despite all the hype surrounding IMS at this year’s Fall VON show in Boston, the MSF (MultiService Forum) argues that there’s a clear a gap between theory and reality with the implementation of IMS.

With the release of its Release 3 Architecture specification, the MSF has outlined how a service provider can integrate both IMS and MSF R2 elements within a physical implementation scenario that includes a VoIP softswitch, PSTN interworking and evolution to an IMS-based network. Release 3 also provides clarity of key MSF Release 2 elements such as session border controllers and introducing a new user terminal class, the IMS-aware SIP UA.

Although the end game is the end-to-end IP network, the reality is that most service providers are still in the midst of deploying wireline core VoIP network systems. Release 3 recognizes there will be a coexistence of the existing VoIP systems and emerging 3GPP IMS architecture.

“We are taking a pragmatic and functional approach vs. a theoretical approach to the deployment of IMS,” said James McEachern, a member of the MSF board of directors, representing Nortel Networks. “From there, we are passing the architecture through a reality filter by testing real-world deployment scenarios.”

Building on the lessons learned from Release 2, the MSF will put the Release 3 elements to task at this fall’s GMI (Global MSF Interoperability) event. This event will be hosted at five carrier sites—BT, KT, NTT, Verizon and Vodafone—in addition to test and research facilities at UNH- IOL (Interoperability Lab) and ETRI.

At these host sites, multi-vendor interoperability to achieve fixed mobile convergence supporting the IMS service framework will be tested. “GMI is a dress rehearsal for what’s going to happen with IMS,” McEachern says. “We are moving IMS-based networks from the theoretical to practical by illustrating a multi- operator network deployment that interoperates with VoIP.”

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