UMA + RCS

In the early days of the UMA Today blog, there was much time and energy spent on articulating how IMS for applications other than telephony is actually complementary to UMA.

IMS, of course, means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for mobile operators today (UMA’s target audience), IMS is typically viewed as a means to deliver new revenue generating services above and beyond standard voice and SMS.

In response to this, leading operators and vendors intent on IMS tried to pare down the ‘Immense Menacing Squid’ as some used to refer to it, into pre-packaged set of applications that could be quickly and easily digested by a mobile operator.

The result is RCS, or the Rich Communications Suite. Announced about 6 months ago, RCS looks to wrap up IMS-based ‘rich call’ services, ‘rich’ instant messaging and enhanced address book services together into a single client that can be used on handsets today.

The implication of *today* is that it must be able to run over today’s 3G network, which in turn implies that it will use the existing circuit services network for voice, not a new IMS/SIP based telephony (a la MMTel). It stands to reason that if RCS works with standard 3G telephony, then it should work fine with UMA.

So what does all this pre-amble lead too?

I was on the GSMA site checking out the RCS section, when I happened across the release 1 specifications. I downloaded the “Technical Realisation v1.0” document and was quite surprised to see this:

Along with this text in section 2:

Note about Generic Access Network (GAN)

Generic Access to A/Gb interface provides a secure mechanism, using the SIM credentials, to access the mobile operator core network (both packet and circuit switched) using any unlicensed spectrum technology via a generic IP network. In fact, access to mobile operator core network via GAN is fully transparent from RCS perspective, and as such it does not lead to any particular limitation or impact from service point of view.

As a consequence, from access network perspective, this [GAN] technology is fully part of the scope of RCS, whatever Release is addressed, irrespective of the release.

Hey! Someone has seen the light. There is now proof from the GSMA that UMA and IMS are complementary, not competitive, technologies, at least when it comes to new service delivery.

iMS

The other day I was involved in an interesting discussion regarding IMS. Certainly the original vision of IMS as a platform for delivering new IP based services has been slow to materialize. Per it’s Wikipedia page, IMS is intended “to aid the access of multimedia and voice applications from wireless… terminals”.

This got us thinking… The concept sounds quite familiar. Isn’t there already a tool to aid the access of multimedia and voice applications from wireless terminals? It sounds a lot like Apple’s wildly successful AppStore.

Could AppStore actually be the new iMS?

Consider the idea for a minute. The vision of IMS was to develop a platform where new applications could be made available to users on their phones. Rather than monolithic systems which pushed out one or two new services a year, IMS was to unleash the power of millions of developers to create thousands of applications to address the ‘long tail’ of user interests.

Apple’s AppStore has thousands of applications and literally millions of downloads. Certainly very few of the applications relate directly to mobile phones, but that’s the point, right? Give users access to a world of new applications which make the mobile phone (or iPhone) indispensible.

There are actual telephony applications like Fring, and Truphone as well, along with dozens of social networking applications with presence and instant messaging.

Of course AppStore by itself isn't enough. The industry needed a handset that consumers wanted and provided a platform for developers to work from. In that iPhone has certainly succeeded.

Apple isn’t the only one. Nokia has Ovi which offers a similar experience to the AppStore.

Could it be that the future of IMS is actually iMS?

NEC Turns Up Femtocells

Two announcements today from NEC in the femto market.

First, the company announced it received an order from Softbank in Japan for it’s IMS-based femtocell system. The system does require an IMS infrastructure, which can be troublesome for many existing mobile operators. Softbank’s goal is to be commercial in January 2009.

I believe this is the first commercial announcement/award for 3G femtocells.

Second, NEC made a strategic investment in Kineto Wireless, it’s supplier for RAN gateway-based femtocell solutions. The undisclosed investment was NEC’s first in the femtocell market.

With a win in the IMS approach and an investment in the RAN gateway approach, it appears that NEC is well positioned in the femtocell market moving forward.

"This is like deja vu all over again"

Three years ago, when the concept of dual-mode handsets was just getting started, technology battle lines were drawn. There were two camps for providing seamless mobility in dual-mode handsets.

On one side was the ‘pragmatic’ UMA approach: UMA leverages the operators existing network elements and connects to the mobile core as a RAN gateway through standard interfaces.

The other side was a combination of IMS, SIP and VCC.

Constant battles were fought pitting UMA versus IMS (a RAN technology versus a ‘journey’ to an all IP core network); UMA versus SIP (a RAN technology against a session layer signaling protocol); and UMA versus VCC (a 3GPP standard RAN technology for mobile operators against a still-incomplete, almost-standard for fixed operators to connect the SIP core to the GSM mobile core).

In the end, UMA prevailed. It provides full-service transparency, security and scalability with a modest impact on the mobile core. If a mobile operator wants to roll out dual-mode service today, UMA is the only way.

As we enter 2008, a similar battle is shaping up around femtocells. The protocol for connecting the femtocell to the mobile core network has been divided into two camps.

On one side are the more pragmatic “Iu-over-IP” approaches. UMA, the only 3GPP standard Iu-over-IP approach, is leading the charge, but there are vendor specific approaches from Nokia/Siemens, ip.Access and others.

On the other side is some combination of IMS and SIP…again. Some have even erroneously thrown in VCC as a way to connect a femtocell to a mobile core.

As Yogi Berra famously said, “This is like déjà vu all over again!”

Will the SIP/IMS team be successful this time? It may be too early to say, but there are powerful forces behind the push for Iu-over-IP/UMA. Mobile operators do not want to burden the femtocell business case with new SIP/VoIP infrastructure. Many are drawn to the service transparency and relative simplicity of an Iu-over-IP/UMA approach. In the end, UMA is a proven, deployable technology.

2008 will be the year the two approaches duke it out. But if history is any indication, ‘pragmatic’ wins every time.

Telia: UMA and IMS! not really...

When I first saw the headline “TeliaSonera Plans IMS Service in 2008” in Informa's IMS Vision newsletter, I was excited. Telia is a progressive operator and they are investing heavily in their UMA-based dual-mode service called HomeFree. I was certain they were going to combine IMS services onto UMA devices and have seamlessly mobility to Wi-Fi for IMS applications.

Alas, that is not the case. The article interviews Goran Eriksson, TeliaSonera’s head of technology for the broadband/fixed line side of the business.

'The main driver for TeliaSonera to ramp up IMS in the fixed side of the business is to upgrade and enhance its VoIP services and the first ‘IMS service’ that TeliaSonera subscribers will use will be VoIP, in 2008.’

So this is the state of IMS today...

Near the end of the article, it is mentioned that VCC is available from the vendor Telia has chosen for network infrastructure. Mr. Eriksson was coy about any plans. VCC for a fixed operator, what a surprise.

The Dogma of IMS

Upperside, a European conference promoter, has an event Apr 17-20 in Paris titled Wireless/Wi-Fi Convergence 2007: Deploying UMA and IMS Architectures.

Often conferences try to stir up controversy by pitting arch rivals against one-another on panels and the like.

Yet this is the first time I can recall a conference evoking the schisms of Christianity to instill some controversy into an event.

And I quote:

“And, IMS, like Catholicism, now has its own Protestant sects - ETSI TISPAN, ATIS, MSF, PacketCable and the DSL Forum - that are breaking off and defining their own architecture and technology extensions/replacements to the IMS dogma.”

This will prove to be a very enlightening conference!