Government Computer News
In the end, it's all one big network
CHICAGO—What used to be called telecommunications has been merged into a global communications technology in which the distinction between the applications being delivered and the media used to deliver it are disappearing.
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“Everyone knows the future is an all-IP network,” said Dan Wonak, director of marketing for IntelliNet Technologies of Melbourne, Fla. “The only difference is the method of access. TV, cell phone, computer—it’s all coming from the same media supplier.”
The Telecommunications Industry Association has acknowledged this shift by revamping its annual trade show, formerly known as SuperComm. After closing out the old franchise with last year’s show, it debuted the GlobalComm brand this year, and there is not a lot of attention being paid on the show floor to traditional circuit-switched voice networks.
One of the phrases most frequently used at this year’s show is IP Multimedia Subsystems, and the IMS Forum is holding its annual meeting at this year’s conference.
IMS is not about flashy applications you can access from the latest portable device. It is a network signaling architecture that ties together all types of voice, video and data services, whether delivered over a wired or wireless network, to fixed or mobile endpoints.
“Our piece is rather boring,” Wonak said with uncharacteristic candor for a marketing guy. “We’re in the guts of the network. Nobody knows we’re there.”
“IMS is trying to crack the code for a common signaling network architecture,” said Ron De Lange, president and general manager of the network signaling group of Tekelec of Morrisville, N.C. “It’s trying to be independent of how you access the network.”
IMS is a standard developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Program to provide a common platform for service providers to authenticate users and authorize access to services on advanced networks, and provides customer accounting for billing data. IMS Forum is a technology-neutral advocate of the standard that promotes development of interoperable products.
The forum began life as the International Softswitch Consortium, and its evolution illustrates changes in the networking industry. ISC initially focused on dial-up Internet service provisioning over traditional telephone lines, said forum chairman Michael Khalilian.
“We were running out of space on our telephone switches,” as users with modems were keeping their connections for hours at a time rather than for the few minutes that was standard for traditional telephone calls, Khalilian said.
A new generation of gateways was developed to address this issue, but with the migration of voice to IP networks a new set of issues developed as the telecom industry became linked more closely with other types of networks and services. ISC became the International Packet Communications Consortium. Distinctions between networks and services have since become more blurred.
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