Telstra: IMS hype doesn’t stand up to reality

Speaking at an IMS conference in Sydney, the CTO, Hugh Bradlow said “There’s a lot of the hype around IMS that just doesn’t stand up to reality. IMS is supposed to work end-to-end. Try and find me a decent IMS handset today and I’d be very interested in talking to you, but don’t bring me the usual suspects because the way the industry is talking today you have a different IMS client for every service you’re offering, which totally defeats the purpose of the whole thing in the first place.”

Turning to the requirement that a SCIM (Smart Common Input Method) has to be in place to permit multiple applications to run in the same environment, Mr. Bradlow said it is “like the abominable snowman – much talked about but never seen.”

The CTO presented various hypothetical scenarios involving mobile users such as a subscriber watching movie previews, then ordering the film to be delivered to a home media server, with an IMS program popping up to offer a range of up-selling and cross-selling opportunities such as giving the option to order a pizza to arrive just in time before the movie starts.

Hugh Bradlow asked, “Will people do it?" and then answered himself by saying, "Probably, if you make it that seamless. That’s the vision we’ve been working to, and that’s what will drive IMS.”

However, Mr. Bradlow also referred to the “thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of standards” that would be required to drive an effective real-time IMS solution, pointing out that “it’s not a silver bullet, and it’s not the only part of the solution.”

He continued that “there is no shortage of challenges in introducing IMS,” listing issues such as open source software environments, integrating legacy IM services, and delivery frameworks.

He added, “If we are going to make this environment work...