A new study by Infonetics Research that provides an in-depth view of service provider thinking and plans for IMS equipment and services, including service provider perceptions of leading IMS vendors, names Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens as the "top IMS equipment manufacturers." According to the study, roughly 3/4 plan to offer fixed VoIP over IMS by April 2009.

"So far, IMS has mainly been deployed to support fixed-line VoIP services rather than multimedia services, likely because IMS multimedia services to date have shown varying degrees of success. As service providers accelerate their transition to VoIP to more efficiently compete, and as more of them experiment with new mobile and multimedia services, IMS will be the glue that bridges their heterogeneous networks together and assures standardization of those services," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics for service provider VoIP, IMS, and mobile infrastructure.

Other highlights from the study:

Interoperability between different types of next gen voice and IMS equipment was the only obstacle rated by more than half the respondents as a "strong barrier" to deploying IMS

When asked what kind of new IMS-enabled service respondents would like to offer by and after 2009, FMC was the clear leader

3GPP IMS leads the list of reference architectures respondents' VoIP networks are based on now, increasing to about 3/4 of respondents by 2009

In a series of questions asking service providers to rate Alcatel- Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nokia Siemens, Nortel, and Sonus, those familiar with the vendors rated NEC highest for management, price-to- performance ratio, financial stability, and service and support

Roughly 1/4 of respondents have already installed Ericsson MRFs in their networks

Broadsoft dominates the field of deployed application server manufacturers

Source:cellular-news