Bob Emmerson's Blog

I saw this on the MobileBroadband Forum; "How long is it going to be before we see IMS phones with SIP-based voice? My prediction: a very long time (10-15 years."

My reply: "My understanding is that around IMS systems are being trialed and we can expect to see value added services being marketed in 6-9 months. Companies like Sylantro, Broadsoft and Ubiquity have service portfolios that are marketed as hosted voice (aka IP Centex) and they are being 'ported' to IMS. In order to employ these services you need a SIP-compliant device and these are available and more are coming. You don't need a special IMS phone. If that had been the case then the whole thing would have been dead in the water."

That innocent comment lead to a flurry of interesting emails. People that one would regard as experts contradicted each other. Others linked IMS to 3G. IMS is seen as 3G's saviour but there is no direct link. Along the way I realized that while IMS is a big SIP server the way of working is both P2P (e.g. on-line gaming) and client-server (mobile email).

Betrand Chauvet drew attention to the fact that "NetCentrex is already rolling out 3G services, mainly centered around videocommunications (video service broker, video mail etc), and those services are shared between 3G H324M and Fixed broadband users (H.323 and SIP based). We haved such services as Video Service Brokers in production for France Telecom today." He also thinks that MS-SIP is still several years away but he's a big fan of video to mobiles.

I think this is a service looking for a way of selling all that expensive 3G bandwidth and then I recalled my 1998 experience when as an outsider, a writer, I presented to 600 mobile data experts and network operators. At that event BT ran an incredibly expensive video that involved a big screen PDA/phone that had a virtual assistant - you could tell it to change your flight for example - it also did video conferencing and ----- wait for this one, simultaneous language translation. They showed a video conference between a Japanese guy and a Brit. Amazing. At the end the guy went rowing on a lake, got a call and managed to drop the device into the water. A more symbolic ending that BT intended.