IP Multimedia services

They grow up so fast, don't they? It seems only yesterday that the 3GPP gave birth to the IP Multimedia Subsystem and now we are getting ready to celebrate its Sweet Sixteen and turn it loose on the world.

Of course, way back in (Release) 2000 we didn’t even have a name for it, so we called it “All IP”. Supporting its newly minted acronym, the first IMS specifications were frozen in March 2002 under TS22.228 and promised a world where decoupled signaling and media services were delivered from highly decomposed network functions with well-defined (predominantly SIP-based) reference interfaces, providing modular scalability while eliminating the classic application stovepipes. Back then, each and every stovepipe was dominated by a large vendor who dictated every component in the service chain, often compelling network operators to employ expensive, sub-par, components while frequently forcing them to deploy more than one variant of the same product. Our newborn was going to change the status quo. Take the telecom world by storm.

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