From IMS to fiber, RBOCs tout promise of next-gen services

LAS VEGAS - Look for the RBOCs to sidestep a number of technological obstacles and make significant progress on IP Multimedia Subsystems, wireless broadband and fiber-based video initiatives over the next year, a sign that compelling new services for businesses and consumers are imminent.

Such was the word last week from the CTOs of BellSouth, Qwest, SBC and Verizon as they shared their companies' strategic plans during the Telecom '05 conference. The Las Vegas event attracted a few thousand attendees and 230 exhibitors.

Next-generation telecom networks will be "device aware, end user aware and application aware," said SBC CTO Chris Rice. "Customers should not have to think, 'What network am I on?'"

IMS standards are key to enabling that, Rice and the other CTOs say. IMS is an architecture that essentially takes the place of the control infrastructure in traditional circuit-switched telephone networks, separating services from the underlying networks that carry them.

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LAS VEGAS - Look for the RBOCs to sidestep a number of technological obstacles and make significant progress on IP Multimedia Subsystems, wireless broadband and fiber-based video initiatives over the next year, a sign that compelling new services for businesses and consumers are imminent.

Such was the word last week from the CTOs of BellSouth, Qwest, SBC and Verizon as they shared their companies' strategic plans during the Telecom '05 conference. The Las Vegas event attracted a few thousand attendees and 230 exhibitors.

Next-generation telecom networks will be "device aware, end user aware and application aware," said SBC CTO Chris Rice. "Customers should not have to think, 'What network am I on?'"

IMS standards are key to enabling that, Rice and the other CTOs say. IMS is an architecture that essentially takes the place of the control infrastructure in traditional circuit-switched telephone networks, separating services from the underlying networks that carry them.

Created by the Third Generation Partnership Project, IMS uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as its signaling method for setting up calls and handling data sessions, and enables services such as text messaging, voice mail and file sharing to reside on application servers anywhere, and be delivered by multiple wired and wireless service providers.

But the standard is complex, immature and in need of a lot of work, some CTOs said.

"IMS is in this stage of infancy because we've still got work to do in the industry to define it more succinctly, more explicitly," BellSouth CTO Bill Smith said. Nonetheless, BellSouth has selected but not announced an IMS vendor and is unwavering on the potential of IMS.

"IMS is as important to the future of integrated network services as intelligent-network features were to the traditional circuit-switched network," Smith said. We're going to be surprised and amazed at the power an IMS system gives you for intelligent control."

Although the value of IMS is clear, the same cannot be said for the emerging WiMAX standard for wireless broadband. WiMAX is a point-to-multipoint technology that can transfer about 70M bit/sec over a distance of 30 miles to thousands of users from a single base station. It provides wireless, last-mile broadband access in licensed and unlicensed spectrum below the 11-GHz frequency band, and between 10GHz and 66GHz to connect homes, businesses and wireless LAN hot spots.

BellSouth has pre-WiMAX wireless broadband services in New Orleans and Athens, Ga., and a trial in Palatka, Fla. But the carrier is hard pressed to find an exclusive role or application for WiMAX.

"I really believe WiMAX is a great supplement to all the other things that we offer," Smith said. "It's unlikely in my mind that WiMAX becomes the only communications access vehicle."

Qwest believes it's found WiMAX's niche. The carrier plans to turn up a WiMAX service next year based on a trial it is conducting in northern Denver.

The trial service runs in the 3.5-GHz band of the radio spectrum. Qwest is streaming video over the WiMAX network because real-time video stretches the limits of the shared-bandwidth architecture of WiMAX, said Qwest CTO Balan Nair.