Nokia jumps into the core for FMC and IMS

This was an interesting press release from Nokia.  It shows the development status of FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence).  It also shows the role that FMC will play for IMS adoption.  I believe that carriers, outside of the MNOs, are looking hard for a reason to deploy IMS.  Most understand the value that it brings to a network, but don't have a hard/fast application or set of applications that provide the rationale to put out the CAPEX required.  Here's an example of the attraction that IMS has for a VoIP service provider - or more specifcally, a VoIP service provider that is using Sonus gear.  For those that don't know, the most widely deployed Sonus call model is one that has distributed call state on the ingress and egress gateways.  This distributed call state makes for a great story to tell regarding scale, but service invocation, is another story.  An IMS framework brings to the table a central call state machine with the S-CSCF.  With that call state machine comes the ability to "trigger" applications, services and/or features.  It's at that stage that the value of IMS will be realize.  There will be more about IMS in coming posts and podcasts.

I believe that FMC will be the initail application that "nudges" folks to deploy IMS outside of the wireless carriers.  Now having said that, I also believe that FMC will be deployed outside of the IMS framework, as IMS is not a prerquisite to FMC.  Note the clip from the Nokia press release stating just that,

"The Nokia VoIP Server can be implemented as a stand-alone solution in fixed networks as a first step toward convergence.  Alternatively, it can also be deployed as an application server within the IMS framework."

FMC and IMS are very interesting topics for me, and I plan on touching those topics frequently.

Link to Press Release
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Adam "voiploser" Uzelac
www.voiploser.com