Global Testing Event to Link Labs for IMS Focus

MultiService Forum is preparing to kickoff the biennial Global Multiservice Interoperability testing event in which Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), the National Communication System (NCS) and the UNH-IOL in North America, British Telecom and Vodafone in the United Kingdom, and China Mobile in Asia will link their labs to test standards.

Those tested will be for a variety of service configurations, including those developed by the ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF).

This year, IPTV is of particular interest as ATIS’ IIF has been working on IPTV standards and industry implementation agreements. Currently, however, most IPTV implementations do not use IMS resulting in silos of proprietary infrastructure, limiting the potential for IP video to interact with other services.

Participating this year will be 22 equipment companies: Acme Packet, Alcatel-Lucent, Codenomicon, Empirix, Fujitsu, Huawei, Ixia, JDSU, Motorola, MuDynamics, NEC, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Nortel, OSI, Sonus, Spirent, Starent, Tekelec, Tektronix, Telchemy, Teles and ZTE.

“Early critics described IMS as a wonder technology in search of a killer application,” said Roger Ward, Office of the CTO, BT Group and president of the MSF, in prepared comments. “That killer application turns out to be service integration, and IMS will provide network services the flexibility to move with the market just as nimbly as with the Internet.

“IPTV,” added Ward, “is just one example of a new wave service that operators seek to deliver on a variety of underlying infrastructures and we anticipate major media interest in our GMI 2008 IPTV-related scenarios that compare IMS and non-IMS based solutions.”

The MSF says the results of the testing will be published some time after the event, after which the standards for interoperability would be applied, and services created and launched.

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