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Carriers Eager to Deploy FMC; Luke Warm on IMS, Infonetics Poll Suggests

6:00 am on August 27, 2007 | Category: Business, Telecom Services, Telephone, Wireless

Almost 80% of wireless carriers plan to offer some kind of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) service by April of next year, according to a recent series of interviews by Infonetics Research.

Most service providers are expecting higher average revenue per user, and the ability to keep more voice traffic within their own networks, as a result of FMC deployments.

Many carriers also have their eye on IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) as a way to efficiently deliver multimedia to customers, but IMS is beginning to take a back seat to other technological priorities, Infonetics suggests. More than half of the 24 carriers polled said they hoped to fully deploy IMS by 2010, but a significant number claimed that they had no plans for a full IMS offering.

“Despite the fact that 71 per cent of the service providers we interviewed for a similar study last year expected to use IMS architecture in 2007, we cautioned that providers were being optimistic with their uptake plans,” noted StÃ©phane TÃ©ral, Infonetics’ principal analyst for service provider VoIP, IMS and FMC.

“With this year’s study, we now have concrete evidence of IMS adoption shifting out,” TÃ©ral said. “Just over a quarter are using IMS in 2007 and less than half plan to do so in 2008.”

Infonetics Research obtained these figures throughout formal interviews with 24 wireless service providers in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. More information about the 133-page study are available at the Infonetics website.

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