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Carrier Services
Swisscom Plans IMS Launch Despite Doubts
Operators Prioritise Cost Savings Over Revenue, Says IBM
by Iain Morris
With the future shape of the communications market so uncertain, operators investing
in IMS-based services are potentially taking a big gamble.
Such was the admission of Xavier Weibel, project manager of IMS at Swisscom, when
speaking to journalists assembled at IBM’s testing facility in Montpellier earlier today.
Weibel agreed that analysts’ scepticism of IMS-based services was understandable
given the debacle of 3G, which flopped after huge investments in the technology and
services by operators throughout Europe.
But despite his reservations, Weibel revealed that Swisscom had been busy trialling
IMS-based services at the Montpellier lab and was planning to launch two such products
sometime next year.
The first, he said, would be a VoIP phone aimed at the residential consumer market,
while the second – provisionally called One Phone – is intended to be a multi-mode
handset that can effect a seamless handover between VoIP, WiFi and GSM networks.
Even though the business case for IMS is far from clear, Weibel does not think
Swisscom can afford to adopt a ‘wait and see’ strategy. “We would take a bigger risk if
we do nothing,” he said.
It is imperative, he explains, that smaller players like Swisscom – which lack the clout
of a France Telecom or BT – concentrate their initial efforts on ‘niche’ investments that
‘reuse existing concepts’. Accordingly, the operator’s roadmap to IMS will be based on
an incremental rollout: if the VoIP and One Phone products prove successful, Swisscom
will look to introduce the more value-added services that IMS can deliver.
“We call this a ‘try and buy’ model,” said Weibel.
In his view, big drivers of adoption during the early stages of IMS deployment could
include the appeal of the next-generation devices themselves and a quality-of-service
assurance that existing VoIP competitors like Skype cannot guarantee.
As well as opening up new revenue streams from planned services, IMS deployment
can help an operator reduce operating expenditure on its current portfolio. Weibel
agreed this was a prime consideration but was unable to quantify those savings.
“IMS developments are happening much faster than previous technology trends,” he
said. “That makes it hard to talk about exact savings. It all depends on a ‘best bet’.”
Speaking on the same theme yesterday, IBM Partner Sandy Aitken said that away from
the public eye most operators were more interested in the cost savings than the new
revenue opportunities associated with IMS deployment. IBM puts the reduction on
operating expenditure for a typical operator that has deployed IMS architecture at
between 18 and 23 percent.
That figure is even greater than estimates released by infrastructure vendor Apertio at
last week’s VON conference in Boston.
Interestingly, Weibel’s doubts about the IMS business case chime with research
conducted by Apertio showing that most operators interested in deploying IMS have
little or no idea whether it promises a return on investment.
“ROI represents something of a ‘grey area’ in our research,” said Richard Hallett,
director of product management with Apertio.
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