’Reachability’ in converged IMS services — a BT Alcatel-Lucent collaboration

Abstract

BT has commenced the switch-over to its 21st Century Network — an all-IP based network which will reduce costs and provide a more ‘innovation-friendly’ platform where exciting new services can be rolled out much more quickly and cost effectively. Increasing computing power and openness on the client device coupled with the move to an IP environment fundamentally alters the competitive landscape for service provision, making it much harder to control the customer’s service experience. Further complexity is introduced by convergence — the requirement for services to run across a multitude of networks and devices. The challenge is to create an infrastructure capable of delivering the exciting new own-build and third-party converged services users want while preserving ease of use and security. The IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) element of the 21CN architecture is a key enabler in reaching these goals. Alcatel-Lucent is a vendor with a strong track-record both in supplying IMS products and in ongoing research activities, considering improvements and extensions to the current IMS standards. This paper summarises activities to date in a research collaboration between BT and Alcatel-Lucent which is looking at the area of improved intelligence in the provision of converged services over an IMS architecture. The collaboration utilises capabilities produced by Alcatel-Lucent’s research department called the Reachability Server to implement a number of novel converged service scenarios. The paper introduces the Reachability Server, describes the collaboration, summarises the scenario implementation work completed to date and presents a number of conclusions and observations.