IMS for Operators with Mobile & Fixed Units

In previous posts I described how I think IMS is currently perceived by many fixed operators and by mobile operators.

Operators that have both types of organization will obviously combine the fixed and mobile perceptions. As there are important differences between them, it might not help having a consolidated view on IMS at the company level. However, it is also likely that, for reasons explained before, IMS is a topic that is more on the radar of the fixed unit. This makes that the overall perception of IMS in the company is likely to be close to the one of a fixed operator.

However, the key IMS keyword for a fixed and mobile operator is likely to be convergence.

The only problem is to define what IMS-based fixed mobile convergence is, and to answer such a basic question as: how many IMS does it take to converge?

If you ask the question to each of the fixed and mobile organization, they are likely to provide one of the following answers:

- It takes two IMS core network for fixed mobile convergence: one for the converged fixed network and one for the converged mobile network.

- It takes only one IMS core network, as long as our organization owns it. Otherwise, we believe that IMS is a bad technology.

As I already had the opportunity to explain, I believe that not only fixed mobile convergence requires a single network, it also requires a unification of the fixed/mobile subscriber into a single converged subscriber. This unification will impact the whole company, and will need to be performed in several steps.

For the operator, the possibility to deploy a unique network shared between mobile and fixed access certainly represents an important opportunity for cost savings. It also certainly promises a better user experience for customers, including interesting possibilities for convergent services, available across all the devices connected to the network.

However, in the short and mid-term, IMS is also likely to be an important source of headaches. Being linked to fixed mobile convergence, which is a topic that will touch all the organizations of the operator and will eventually lead to a major redefinition of the company, IMS is a highly organizational and political topic for operators with mobile and fixed units.

Consequently, a key question associated to the deployment of IMS for such an operator is the following: should the re-organization of technical units start before IMS deployment, or can it start later, once IMS has been deployed and is already supporting several services?

My 2 cents to this very difficult question is that it may be good to provide a minimum of clarification concerning the future of the company and its existing organizations, and maybe even more than this, if the operator does not want to see an anti-IMS coalition being formed in organizations which do not know what their future will be.

This said, I believe that an operator that successfully handles the FMC challenges has good assets for success in the future telecom world, by its deep understanding of both the mobile and fixed domains, and by its established footprint as both a mobile and fixed operator.

Typically, in a case where a mobile operator would hesitate to deploy an innovative service because of the hurdle to get the relevant support in mobile handsets combined with doubts about its business case, a converged operator could decide to first deploy the service on open fixed devices (e.g. a PC), see how successful it is, and then drive the porting of the service on mobile handsets once it is confident that there is a clear demand for it. Similarly, a converged operator may from the beginning conceive services that will be accessible through fixed and mobile devices.

As a conclusion I would say that an operator with fixed and mobile units certainly faces the biggest challenges for deploying IMS, because of the FMC-enabling nature of IMS, while it may at the same time have the most interesting opportunities, thanks to the same FMC-enabling nature of IMS.

Christophe