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http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1434613

2Q 2011 . info@IMSForum.org . www.NGNForum.org . www.IMSForum.org

Dear NGN IMS Forum Members and Colleagues,

NGN IP Convergence is once again breaking out everywhere. We now have convergence of applications, content and services. Applications are downloaded onto user devices or service models are deployed where the user device only requires a browser. These processes place huge burdens on networks as many of us have seen with the introduction of the iPhone.

LTE may alleviate the problem but it is a Long-Term Evolution and the growth of smart devices is rapid. There is a need to know what performance is being delivered by networks and what extra capacity needs to be installed in order to provide a satisfactory user experience. We need to test and benchmark the performance and quality of experience of a vast array of applications over the new networks, so we can see where we are today and what remains to be done to ensure continued consumer enthusiasm for these exciting Apps.

Convergence moves the network infrastructure towards commodity equipment and lower cost network provisioning. IP is the way to converge wireless as well as wireline networks. IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks are playing a part in ensuring security and quality of service. IP Multimedia Subsystem enables Voice over IP, Instant Messaging and presence (a subscription / notification mechanism to provide information to a select group of users in real-time). IMS is also deployed to provide Rich Communications Services (RCS) to enable users to share contents, chat using audio and video, and to be notified if their contacts are available (presence).

So in addition to needing faster networks to pass more data rapidly, we also need tighter security mechanisms, more flexible billing management and protection against unauthorized network use. These enhanced mechanisms also require comprehensive testing. This article continues in more detailed in our Technical Working Group Update Section Below.

Many of these LTE and pre-LTE scenarios and more will be addressed at the upcoming NGN Forum Plugfest 9 to be held this Fall. The NGN Forum Plugfest 9 (www.NGNForum.org/Plugfest_9) is the leading event for testing and verifying interoperability today. This event will be attended by all the leading infrastructure vendors. We are currently working on the test plan for our next IMS and NGN Plugfests. interoperability test events, which will test out many of these business models along with others. Registration for this Plugfest and Working Groups is now open to any service providers, integrators, vendors, apps developers, utility companies and governmental agencies who would like to participate and provide their input into the final test plan (www.IMSforum.org/Plugfest_9). For additional information please contact Admin@NGNforum.org.

Regards,

Michael Khalilian
President
NGN Forum

==============================

Market Research Corner

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System and Challenge Symbian for No. 1 Position by 2014

The worldwide mobile operating system (OS) market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner, Inc.

Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner's worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia's volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.

"The worldwide mobile OS market is dominated by four players: Symbian, Android, Research In Motion and iOS," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Launches of updated operating systems . such as Apple iOS 4, BlackBerry OS 6, Symbian 3 and Symbian 4, and Windows Phone 7 . will help maintain strong growth in smartphones in 2011 and spur innovation. However, we believe that market share in the OS space will consolidate around a few key OS providers that have the most support from CSPs and developers and strong brand awareness with consumer and enterprise customers."

Forecast: Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

OS	2009	2010	2011	2014
Symbian	80,876.3	107,662.4	141,278.6	264,351.8
Market Share (%)	46.9	40.1	34.2	30.2
Android	6,798.4	47,462.1	91,937.7	259,306.4
Market Share (%)	3.9	17.7	22.2	29.6
Research In Motion	34,346.8	46,922.9	62,198.2	102,579.5
Market Share (%)	19.9	17.5	15.0	11.7
iOS	24,889.8	41,461.8	70,740.0	130,393.0
Market Share (%)	14.4	15.4	17.1	14.9
Windows Phone	15,031.1	12,686.5	21,308.8	34,490.2
Market Share (%)	8.7	4.7	5.2	3.9
Other Operating Systems	10,431.9	12,588.1	26,017.3	84,452.9
Market Share (%)	6.1	4.7	6.3	9.6
Total Market	172,374.3	268,783.7	413,480.5	875,573.8

Source: Gartner

"CSPs and mobile device manufacturers alike will need to revisit their platform strategies and balance the need to pursue platforms with the highest current demand against the need to maintain differentiation with unique devices," Ms. Cozza said. "CSPs will likely reduce the number of platforms they offer, to reduce their support costs and clarify their propositions to market."

Gartner predicts that by 2014, open-source platforms will continue to dominate more than 60 percent of the market for smartphones. Single-source platforms, such as Apple's iOS and Research In Motion's OS, will increase in unit terms, but their growth rate will be below market average and not enough to sustain share increase. Windows Phone will be relegated to sixth place behind MeeGo in Gartner's worldwide OS ranking by 2014.

Additional information is available in the report "Forecast: Mobile Communications Devices by Open Operating System" which is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1428830.

NGN Forum Q & A

Q & A with Richard Jobson, President, Teraquant

Teraquant is a systems integrator, exclusively focused on test and monitoring solutions. We work with engineering-based test technology companies and bring those solutions to market. For IMS, we mostly develop business and solutions for IPTEGO GmbH.s Service Assurance software for operational VoIP and IMS network Service Assurance and for Nexus Telecom for IMS and wireless lab test systems.IPTEGO has an interesting history having been involved with the original SIP and IMS research from day one. The IPTEGO team was involved in developing the very popular SIP softswitch SER and they helped Tier1 telcos with their first SIP deployments with regard to scalability, high availability and accounting. Later when SIP had been deployed virtually in every operator's network and IMS became more and more popular we began to help our customers optimize their Return on Investment in both SIP and IMS. Leveraging our multi-year experience in SIP & SS7 networks, we present a unique real-time monitoring product that takes operators to the next level in delivering a great Customer Experience and in lowering Cost of Operations.

What IMS and NGN services and products does your company offer and what are some of the key differentiators for your company in this market?

Based on the Nexus telecom 8610 test platform, Teraquant provides high-end load test systems, capable of really stressing high-capacity SoftSwitch/CSCF/B/MGCF/MRFC IMS infrastructure. From IPTEGO, we provide real-time Service Assurance for IMS operators. The most popular applications to date are Customer Experience Management and Network Operations and Customer Care. Fraud prevention in the recent past has also become an important application and we see it's importance for growth in the years to come.

IPTEGO's solution is unique in terms of the actual End-To-End view it provides. It shows business relevant information at a glance. Even people in operations who have much more experience in TDM networks than they have in IMS are able to finish tasks in minutes with this solution which before took them literally hours to complete. The Product also makes it very simple for Customer Service Agents to solve problems independently without resorting to protocol specialists.

Teraquant's unique contribution is to seamlessly integrate a number of software solutions with hardware scaled for the job and to guarantee that it all works in your network. We work with customers on interoperability and implementation issues to ensure the test and monitoring solution makes visible all the information they need

How do the IMS Forum's Plugfests benefit your company and its customers?

When it comes to generating calls or sessions with the Nexus 8610 load tester, the IMS Plugfests are very useful in seeing how our test systems interoperate with the major infrastructure vendors out there. With regard to our monitoring systems, we.re not so involved in the exchange of messages across the network. We automatically highlight and make visible all interactions between the network equipment. In other words we assist with this very important role of the Plugfest by helping to isolate problems during the event.

How does a verification and certification process aid in the development of IMS interoperability/standards?

Verification gives confidence that standards are robust and workable. Verification of interoperability gives service providers confidence that they can deploy best in class solutions from multiple different vendors at a competitive price. IMS networks may be capable of setting up sessions and calls and providing new rich content-based services and applications. But only a Certification Program will prove that the network is actually authenticating users correctly. So a Certification program would have high-value in proving that IMS standards are being adhered to and that the security IMS promises is actually being delivered.

Who are some of your customers and what IMS services are they deploying?

Vodafone, T-Mobile and KPN are providing a variety of services based on IMS networks and their number of subscribers is continuously growing.

What are some areas of IMS where you have found challenges for operators?

Operations and Customer Care. What appears rather straight forward to operate often times turns out to be very complex and hard to handle in a production environment. The lack of standards for IPTV and VoD and the lack of value-added service beyond traditional voice calls is an issue for operators. It makes reasonable ROIs based on IMS platforms difficult to achieve.

Are there any other critical benchmarks that need to take place in this IMS NGN evolution?

There is no way to actually compare the level of quality provided by two networks of different operators or even from the same operator. Even when looking at a single network, it is hardly possible to tell the actual quality provided by the network to its subscribers. A number of KPIs have been defined, none of which actually tells a lot about the Customers' Experience. Often operators focus a lot on voice quality, underestimating the importance of the overall performance.

We are listening to the debate on "network neutrality" and trying not to get involved. But that debate does have an impact on the quality of the service provided to the end-user.

What are some of the key factors for NGN/IMS success in the industry?

Standards for basic services, particularly for IPTV and VoD are very important. New ideas for value added services over and above traditional TDM service offerings and the ability to assist service providers with their security issues are also key. Toll fraud is the most urgent of many security concerns today.

To have your company considered for a profile in the Q & A section of this newsletter send an email to pr@ngnforum.org.

NGN Forum IMS Forum Technical Working Groups Update

Cont.d. from the Chairman.s Note on page 1: Let's examine for a moment the mobile user. Accessing content, to which the user is entitled, requires Authentication of mobile user devices from wherever they wish to connect to the network and download applications or content. For example, users may find themselves in a location which is covered by a roaming network. There needs to be a secure, reliable and efficient method to authenticate the user on their home network so that the full range of services subscribed to by the user can be accessible from their current location. In the future, a subscriber identity will be associated with software rather than a proprietary hardware device. So identity needs to be verified using a more robust authentication and authorization mechanism. We need to test not only that the user can be authenticated, but also that the correct authentication mechanism has been used, and if not, authentication will be denied.

It is necessary to test and monitor the network to ensure that:

· Network security is provided

· Users are authenticated correctly, and

· Services are provided in an optimal way

· Access is controlled as some services may not be provided in the visited network while permitted in the home network, according to pre-defined policies implemented by network operators in the home and visited networks.

Only certain devices may authenticate groups of users. The flow of authentication messages or REGISTRATION messages must flow through specific network elements such as a Call Session Control Function (CSCF) to ensure subscribers. accounts are not being cloned or hijacked by a rogue user. Users must only be allowed to access the features and services they have subscribed to and each service must benefit from the quality of service that it needs to ensure a satisfactory user.

IMS involves complex message flows over a system under test which comprises multiple network elements for example Proxy CSCF (P-CSCF); Interrogating CSCF (I-CSCF); Serving CSCF (S-CSCF) & Home Subscriber Server (HSS) plus interconnection to the legacy SS7 network. Although testing in the laboratory prior to deployment in the network is usually extensive, there may not be the necessary test infrastructure available comprising multi-vendor equipment with a range of switch software releases or implementations. Testing must be an ongoing process that extends into network operations or First Office Application (FOA) in order to test with high load and traffic patterns sometimes only experienced in a live network. This phased or continuous approach to testing leads to accelerated new IMS-based services deployment. The challenge with IMS-based service deployment is that it requires reliable correlation of events happening at different parts of the network and stateful observation. In other words, we need to ensure that events happen in a specified precise order or sequence.

For example, it would be valuable to know that an I-CSCF is not allowing services to a roaming user endpoint before that user has effectively authenticated on their home HSS. Conversely, it would be valuable to know that if a user has authenticated on their home HSS, that they can use the services they are subscribed to. Say for example, the home HSS sees a registration notification from a roaming network for their own subscribers but never sees any subsequent use of service either through a billing event or a session on content delivery service on the home network. Could this be that the roaming network is denying service due to a network problem or other reason? It is in the interest of the home network to work with the roaming network to solve the problem and accelerate billable events or minutes.

Contributions for this article were provided by Richard Jobson NGN Forum Plugfest PM (Teraquant), Jean-Luc Bouthemy (T-Mobile), Leslie D'Souza (Tech Mahindra), and Michael Khalilian.

The NGN Forum Technical Working Group is currently working on its All-IP Applications Delivery over NGN Networks Technical Working Group document. The scope of this paper is to present technologies for applications running over broadband IP networks such as Service Delivery Platform, cloud and smart grid technologies.

Business Case

High-level architecture

Business Support System / Operational support Systems

Service Delivery Platform

IP Multimedia Subsystem

Network Abstraction Layer

Integration to other Components

NGN Applications

Cloud Computing
M2M
IP Video
RCS
Examples of Applications

Conformance, Testing, Reliability, Interoperability

Contributing companies to date include: Huawei, Sonus, Symantec, Tech Mahindra, T-Mobile, and Teraquant.

We encourage the industry to join us in the drafting of this document. Please email your questions and contributions to the PR@ngnforum.org. We encourage NGN telecom operators and vendors to become more involved in helping us move the bar for new IP applications. For additional information and to participate contact us at info@ngnforum.org or visit the IMS website at www.NGNForum.org

NGN Forum Calendar of Events

See the NGN/IMS Forum at the following 2011 events:

June 6-8: FTTx and Next Generation Access, Berlin
June 14-16: The Cable Show, Chicago, IL
June 15-17, 2011: BOSS, Washington, DC
Sept. 13-15, 2011: Internet Telephony Expo. 4GWE, Austin
October 2-5, 2011: Comptel, Orlando
October 11-13, 2011: CTIA Enterprise & Applications, San Diego
October 24-27, 2011: 4G World, Chicago
November 8-9, 2011: LTE World, Dallas
November 8-10, 2011: Management World Americas 2011, Orlando
Feb. 14-17, 2011: Mobile World Congress, Barcelona

Smart Grid Shows:

June 15-16, 2011: West Coast Energy Management Conf., Long Beach
Sept. 25-28, 2011: GRIDWEEK, Washington, DC
November 8-10, 2011: Gridwise Global Forum, Washington, DC
November 15-16, 2011: APPA Smart Grid Summit, Austin, TX
November 30 . Dec. 2, 2011: Grid-Interop, Chicago
December 12-15, 2011: POWER-GEN, Las Vegas, NV
December 24-26, 2011: Utility Products Conference and Exposition, San Antonio, TX

Showcase Your Expertise and Leadership: Call for Speakers

The NGN Forum and IMS Forum invite members to join its exclusive Speakers’ Bureau. Member companies have an excellent opportunity to market their companies and senior executives while representing the Forum at future trade shows and conferences. Simply contact us with a copy of the proposed speaker’s bio and indicate any specific NGN and IMS-related speaking topics and expertise. Speaking topic abstracts of one or two paragraphs are especially helpful. Please send to: pr@ngnforum.org

Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?

The NGN/IMS Forum's mission is to accelerate the interoperability of NGN and IMS applications and services, enabling enterprise and residential consumers to quickly benefit from the delivery of quadruple play voice, video, Internet and mobile services over broadband via cable, mobile and fixed networks. NGN/IMS applications and services comprise residential VoIP, entertainment including IPTV and gaming, IP Centrex / IP PBX and unified communications for business including fixed-mobile converged services, videoconferencing and web-collaboration. NGN and IMS networks include DSL, Cable, GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi and WiMAX implementations. The NGN/IMS Forum Plugfests, typically held every 3 to 4 months, bring together dozens of industry-leading NGN and IMS vendors from around the world, all of whom build real, full-featured, NGN and IMS networks during the test event. If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum. All are invited to participate in the industry's first open NGN/IMS Community where Forum members, those involved in various NGN and IMS working groups, the IMS Linkedin group, our industry and colleagues around the world can participate in active, mutually beneficial discussions. Take a moment to register now. Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:

Verify and certify interoperability, reduce costs and accelerate time to market
Participate in technical working groups focusing on service creation and applications for NGN/IMS architecture, framework and deployment issues
Gain additional visibility through the NGN/IMS Forum's Speakers Bureau, public relations and marketing programs
Showcase member companies at major telecom, cable, and wireless events in North America, Asia, and Europe
Receive current market and technology information through newsletters, reports, white papers and conferences
Gain access to an informed professional network of industry consultants and accredited experts

Refer the NGN Forum to Your Friends & Colleaguess

Share the benefits of membership with your friends and colleages. Ask about our new Member Referral Rewards Program. For more information email: Admin@NGNForum.org.

Have a request? We welcome your feedback on this newsletter.
Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org

Newsletter 2011 Q2

admin — Sun, 5 Jun 2011 12:13:17 -0700

President's Message

Dear NGN Forum Members and Colleagues,

Many of these LTE and pre-LTE scenarios and more will be addressed at the upcoming NGN Forum Plugfest 9 to be held this Fall. The NGN Forum Plugfest 9 www.NGNForum.org/plugfest is the leading event for testing and verifying interoperability today. This event will be attended by all the leading infrastructure vendors. We are currently working on the test plan for our next IMS and NGN Plugfests™ interoperability test events, which will test out many of these business models along with others. Registration for this Plugfest and Working Groups is now open to any service providers, integrators, vendors, apps developers, utility companies and governmental agencies who would like to participate and provide their input into the final test plan (www.IMSforum.org/Plugfest). For additional information please contact Admin@NGNforum.org

Regards,

Michael Khalilian
President
NGN Forum

==============================

Market Research Corner

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System and Challenge Symbian for No. 1 Position by 2014
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1434613

The worldwide mobile operating system (OS) market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner, Inc.
Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner's worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia's volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.
"The worldwide mobile OS market is dominated by four players: Symbian, Android, Research In Motion and iOS," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Launches of updated operating systems — such as Apple iOS 4, BlackBerry OS 6, Symbian 3 and Symbian 4, and Windows Phone 7 — will help maintain strong growth in smartphones in 2011 and spur innovation. However, we believe that market share in the OS space will consolidate around a few key OS providers that have the most support from CSPs and developers and strong brand awareness with consumer and enterprise customers."
Forecast: Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)
OS 2009 2010 2011 2014
Symbian 80,876.3 107,662.4 141,278.6 264,351.8
Market Share (%) 46.9 40.1 34.2 30.2
Android 6,798.4 47,462.1 91,937.7 259,306.4
Market Share (%) 3.9 17.7 22.2 29.6
Research In Motion 34,346.8 46,922.9 62,198.2 102,579.5
Market Share (%) 19.9 17.5 15.0 11.7
iOS 24,889.8 41,461.8 70,740.0 130,393.0
Market Share (%) 14.4 15.4 17.1 14.9
Windows Phone 15,031.1 12,686.5 21,308.8 34,490.2
Market Share (%) 8.7 4.7 5.2 3.9
Other Operating Systems 10,431.9 12,588.1 26,017.3 84,452.9
Market Share (%) 6.1 4.7 6.3 9.6
Total Market 172,374.3 268,783.7 413,480.5 875,573.8
Source: Gartner
"CSPs and mobile device manufacturers alike will need to revisit their platform strategies and balance the need to pursue platforms with the highest current demand against the need to maintain differentiation with unique devices," Ms. Cozza said. "CSPs will likely reduce the number of platforms they offer, to reduce their support costs and clarify their propositions to market."
Gartner predicts that by 2014, open-source platforms will continue to dominate more than 60 percent of the market for smartphones. Single-source platforms, such as Apple's iOS and Research In Motion's OS, will increase in unit terms, but their growth rate will be below market average and not enough to sustain share increase. Windows Phone will be relegated to sixth place behind MeeGo in Gartner's worldwide OS ranking by 2014.
Additional information is available in the report "Forecast: Mobile Communications Devices by Open Operating System" which is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1428830.

NGN Forum Member Q & A –

Q&A with Richard Jobson, President, Teraquant

IPTEGO has an interesting history having been involved with the original SIP and IMS research from day one. The IPTEGO team was involved in developing the very popular SIP softswitch SER and they helped Tier1 telcos with their first SIP deployments with regard to scalability, high availability and accounting. Later when SIP had been deployed virtually in every operator's network and IMS became more and more popular we began to help our customers optimize their Return on Investment in both SIP and IMS. Leveraging our multi-year experience in SIP & SS7 networks, we present a unique real-time monitoring product that takes operators to the next level in delivering a great Customer Experience and in lowering Cost of Operations.

What IMS and NGN services and products does your company offer and what are some of the key differentiators for your company in this market?
Based on the Nexus telecom 8610 test platform, Teraquant provides high-end load test systems, capable of really stressing high-capacity SoftSwitch/CSCF/B/MGCF/MRFC IMS infrastructure. From IPTEGO, we provide real-time Service Assurance for IMS operators. The most popular applications to date are Customer Experience Management and Network Operations and Customer Care. Fraud prevention in the recent past has also become an important application and we see it's importance for growth in the years to come.

IPTEGO’s solution is unique in terms of the actual End-To-End view it provides. It shows business relevant information at a glance. Even people in operations who have much more experience in TDM networks than they have in IMS are able to finish tasks in minutes with this solution which before took them literally hours to complete. The Product also makes it very simple for Customer Service Agents to solve problems independently without resorting to protocol specialists.

How do the IMS Forum’s Plugfests™ benefit your company and its customers?

When it comes to generating calls or sessions with the Nexus 8610 load tester, the IMS Plugfests are very useful in seeing how our test systems interoperate with the major infrastructure vendors out there. With regard to our monitoring systems, we’re not so involved in the exchange of messages across the network. We automatically highlight and make visible all interactions between the network equipment. In other words we assist with this very important role of the Plugfest by helping to isolate problems during the event.

How does a verification and certification process aid in the development of IMS interoperability/standards?

Who are some of your customers and what IMS services are they deploying?

Vodafone, T-Mobile and KPN are providing a variety of services based on IMS networks and their number of subscribers is continuously growing.

What are some areas of IMS where you have found challenges for operators?

Are there any other critical benchmarks that need to take place in this IMS NGN evolution?

We are listening to the debate on "network neutrality" and trying not to get involved. But that debate does have an impact on the quality of the service provided to the end-user.

What are some of the key factors for NGN/IMS success in the industry?

Technical Working Group Update

Cont’d. from the Chairman’s Note on page 1: Let's examine for a moment the mobile user. Accessing content, to which the user is entitled, requires Authentication of mobile user devices from wherever they wish to connect to the network and download applications or content. For example, users may find themselves in a location which is covered by a roaming network. There needs to be a secure, reliable and efficient method to authenticate the user on their home network so that the full range of services subscribed to by the user can be accessible from their current location. In the future, a subscriber identity will be associated with software rather than a proprietary hardware device. So identity needs to be verified using a more robust authentication and authorization mechanism. We need to test not only that the user can be authenticated, but also that the correct authentication mechanism has been used, and if not, authentication will be denied.

It is necessary to test and monitor the network to ensure that:
• Network security is provided
• Users are authenticated correctly, and
• Services are provided in an optimal way
• Access is controlled as some services may not be provided in the visited network while permitted in the home network, according to pre-defined policies implemented by network operators in the home and visited networks.
Only certain devices may authenticate groups of users. The flow of authentication messages or REGISTRATION messages must flow through specific network elements such as a Call Session Control Function (CSCF) to ensure subscribers’ accounts are not being cloned or hijacked by a rogue user. Users must only be allowed to access the features and services they have subscribed to and each service must benefit from the quality of service that it needs to ensure a satisfactory user.

Contributions for this article were provided by Richard Jobson NGN Forum Plugfest PM (Teraquant), Jean-Luc Bouthemy (T-Mobile), Leslie D'Souza (Tech Mahindra), and Michael Khalilian.

• Business Case
• High-level architecture
• Business Support System / Operational Support Systems
• Service Delivery Platform
• IP Multimedia Subsystem
• Network Abstraction Layer
• Integration to other Components
• NGN Applications
o Cloud Computing
o M2M
o IP Video
o RCS
o Examples of Applications
• Conformance, Testing, Reliability, Interoperability
Contributing companies to date include: Huawei, Sonus, Symantec, Tech Mahindra, T-Mobile, and Teraquant.

NGN Forum Calendar of Events

See the NGN/IMS Forum at the following 2011 events:

• June 6-8: FTTx and Next Generation Access, Berlin
• June 14-16: The Cable Show, Chicago, IL
• June 15-17, 2011: BOSS, Washington, DC
• Sept. 13-15, 2011: Internet Telephony Expo. 4GWE, Austin
• October 2-5, 2011: Comptel, Orlando
• October 11-13, 2011: CTIA Enterprise & Applications, San Diego
• October 24-27, 2011: 4G World, Chicago
• November 8-9, 2011: LTE World, Dallas
• November 8-10, 2011: Management World Americas 2011, Orlando
• Feb. 14-17, 2011: Mobile World Congress, Barcelona

Smart Grid Shows:

June 15-16, 2011: West Coast Energy Management Conf., Long Beach, CA
Sept. 25-28, 2011: GRIDWEEK, Washington, DC
November 15-16, 2011: APPA Smart Grid Summit, Austin
November 8-10, 2011: Gridwise Global Forum, Washington, DC
November 30 – Dec. 2, 2011: Grid-Interop, Chicago
December 12-15, 2011: POWER-GEN, Las Vegas
December 24-26, 2011: Utility Products Conference and Exposition, San Antonio

[Please link the ad above to the following URL: www.ims-congress.com]

Showcase Your Expertise and Leadership: Call for Speakers
The NGN Forum and IMS Forum invite members to join its exclusive Speakers’ Bureau. Member companies have an excellent opportunity to market their companies and senior executives while representing the Forum at future trade shows and conferences. Simply contact us with a copy of the proposed speaker’s bio and indicate any specific NGN and IMS-related speaking topics and expertise. Speaking topic abstracts of one or two paragraphs are especially helpful. Please send to: pr@ngnforum.org

Refer the NGN Forum to Your Friends & Colleaguess

Share the benefits of membership with your friends and colleages. Ask about our new Member Referral Rewards Program. For more information email: Admin@NGNForum.org.

Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?

The NGN/IMS Forum’s mission is to accelerate the interoperability of NGN and IMS applications and services, enabling enterprise and residential consumers to quickly benefit from the delivery of quadruple play voice, video, Internet and mobile services over broadband via cable, mobile and fixed networks.

NGN/IMS applications and services comprise residential VoIP, entertainment including IPTV and gaming, IP Centrex / IP PBX and unified communications for business including fixed-mobile converged services, videoconferencing and web-collaboration. NGN and IMS networks include DSL, Cable, GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi and WiMAX implementations.

The NGN/IMS Forum Plugfests, typically held every 3 to 4 months, bring together dozens of industry-leading NGN and IMS vendors from around the world, all of whom build real, full-featured, NGN and IMS networks during the test event.

If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum.

All are invited to participate in the industry’s first open NGN/IMS Community where Forum members, those involved in various NGN and IMS working groups, the IMS Linkedin group, our industry and colleagues around the world can participate in active, mutually beneficial discussions. Take a moment to register now.

Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:

• Verify and certify interoperability, reduce costs and accelerate time to market

• Participate in technical working groups focusing on service creation and applications for NGN/IMS architecture, framework and deployment issues

• Gain additional visibility through the NGN/IMS Forum's Speakers Bureau, public relations and marketing programs

• Showcase member companies at major telecom, cable, and wireless events in North America, Asia, and Europe

• Receive current market and technology information through newsletters, reports, white papers and conferences

• Gain access to an informed professional network of industry consultants and accredited experts

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have a request? We welcome your feedback on this newsletter.
Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org

1Q2011

admin — Sun, 6 Feb 2011 06:36:27 -0800

IN THIS ISSUE

Member Q&A

In the News

Telecom TV interview with Michael Khalilian

1Q 2011 • info@IMSForum.org • www.NGNForum.org • www.IMSForum.org

Dear NGN IMS Forum Members and Colleagues,

The NGN IMS Forum recently launched its new Smart Energy & Smart Grid Forum, which focuses on two main areas: next-generation communications and NGN energy applications. The Forum.s Next Generation Communications group will continue to focus on the areas of IMS, SDP, 4G, VoIP, RCS/RMS, IP video, IP billing, IP security and interoperability/plugfests.

Our new Smart Energy Forum will focus on NGN energy applications and delivery systems such as smart grid, renewable energy, security, billing and integration for NGN revenue generating apps.

A number of major telecom operators and vendors are driving the initiative to expand into the growing energy management field and apps delivery.

Telecom & Smart Grid
Utilities traditionally have developed their own networks and communication systems. However, with the NGN smart energy products and systems required to integrate with smart grids, utility companies are looking toward telecommunications industry partnerships with apps, technology development and OSS/BSS as well as to manage consumer demand.

Smart grid technologies help improve power reliability through smart devices and applications that adapt in real-time to consumer demand and environmental conditions. Governments are promoting this sophisticated electricity network as a way to address energy independence, global warming, and emergency resilience issues.

Smart grids also will require a higher level of security because they link large and small utilities. In addition, utility companies are interested in securing their individual customer product data to include advanced IP addressing such as IPv6.

Where are the smart grid telecommunication opportunities (technology design, engineering and development)?

Home networking apps and management, which will be one of the forum.s focus areas, is one of the biggest markets for smart grid. Some chip makers already have started to install smart grid .smart chips. in products such as appliances globally.

Some immediate challenges around smart grid implementation strategies include developing interoperability standards and protocols.

Smart Grid Apps Market Outlook

According to Smart Grid News, the U.S. smart grid industry is valued at about $21.4 billion . by 2014, it is projected to exceed $42.8 billion. Given the success of the smart grids in the U.S., the world market is expected to grow at a faster rate, surging from $69.3 billion to $171.4 billion by 2014.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocate billions for energy projects, including $4.5 billion to modernize the electric grid. In addition, other major government initiatives that will increase telecom-related funding include $7.2 billion in broadband deployment grants administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utility Service.

Telecommunications operators and vendors are recognizing that the commercial potential for these new NGN and NGC apps will be a growing and lucrative market.

The NGN Forum will be launching the Smart Energy/Smart Grid apps group this quarter. We welcome the telecom and utility industries to become more involved in helping us move the bar for NGN IMS and smart energy services deployment. NGN

Regards,

Michael Khalilian
President
NGN Forum and IMS Forum

==============================

Market Research Corner

According to In-Stat report, The US Market for Over-the-Top Video Services:

US broadband households that view OTT video will grow from 38 million in 2009 to 81 million by 2014. Revenue from OTT video will more than quadruple by 2014 as it approaches $20 billion (.15.9 billion)
A primary success criteria for OTT video services is access to unique, first-run TV and movie content
Over 1/3 of the 18.24 year old adult households stream full-length OTT video on a regular basis, compared to less than 10% of adult households in the over 45 year-old age brackets

In the U.S. alone, Pyramid Research estimates that revenue from mobile video services will reach $16 billion by 2014. However, much of the demand will come from Europe and Asia/Pacific. According to this recent report by Pyramid Research (See chart below):

The number of global mobile video subscriptions will grow to 534 million in 2014, reaching a penetration rate of 8.5% of total mobile subscriptions, up from the current 2.5% level
In the U.S. alone, Pyramid estimates that revenue from mobile video services will reach $16 billion by 2014. However, much of the demand will come from Europe and Asia/Pacific
Asia-Pacific will be a crucial component of the mobile video opportunity - Already markets such as Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea lead in terms of mobile video subscriptions penetration, but important uptake in India in the next five years is also expected

According to ABI Research.s latest, Mobile Video Services Report:

Revenue from mobile video services is expected to top $2 billion worldwide in 2013 for video telephony, video messaging, video sharing, video-on-demand, VoD downloads, and .other. video services
Video services revenue only amounts to about $121 million this year but growth curve is very steep & will only continue to accelerate through the end of our forecast period in 2015.
Video sharing will be a small portion of this revenue while video telephony, video messaging and video-on-demand will account for the lion.s share
Consumers. appetite for mobile infotainment, sparked by the availability of 3G networks, is a main driver.

NGN Forum Q & A

Q & A with Ray Greenan, Global Marketing Manager, Telecommunications, Symantec

Please provide us with some brief background on your company

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help our customers from consumers and small businesses to the largest global organizations secure and manage their information against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently than any other company. Our Company's unique focus is to eliminate risks to information, technology and processes independent of the device, platform, interaction or location.

Symantec is committed to delivering global solutions that meet local needs. To do that, we have operations in more than 40 countries, including research and development facilities and 24x7 Security Operations Centers and Security Response Labs located around the world. Symantec has established some of the most comprehensive sources of Internet threat data in the world through the Symantec Global Intelligence Network. This network captures worldwide security intelligence data that gives Symantec analyst's unparalleled sources of data to identify and analyze, to deliver protection and provide informed commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam.

What impending NGN related issues do you see for the carriers?

The growth of mobile data usage and device sophistication brings with it a threat of exploitation against network resources, operator revenue, and subscriber trust. By approaching mobile security as a business opportunity, mobile operators have the ability to reduce costs while building subscriber satisfaction.

A consistent policy-based view of user behavior across all services such as SMS, MMS, Email and Web allows mobile operators to identify new exploits whether these are mobile viruses, denial of service , spam or fraudulent phishing attacks; and respond to protect network assets, subscriber privacy and subscriber credit.

Similarly, parents and enterprises want to ensure correct and controlled mobile usage, with the capability to set and manage their own acceptable use policies. By offering this flexibility an operator can respond to different societal responses to age-sensitive content; allow parents to make their own decisions about a child's safe use of mobile phones, and provide enterprises with visibility and control across different employee roles.

What IMS and NGN solutions and products does Symantec offer and what are some of the key differentiators for your company in this market?

Symantec's Next Generation Network Protection allows operators to understand and respond to the specific interests of an individual subscriber in response to their dynamic behavior, across all bearers. This allows operators to grow messaging revenues, maximise advertising revenue, drive response rates and maintain the reputation of their brands.

Symantec Next Generation Network Benefits:

Achieving legislative compliance for content delivery or preventing the imposition of new regulation
Enabling new revenue generation through premium services
Improving customer acqusition and retention through service profiling and content targeting
Driving increased corporate usage and adoption of mobile data services
Resisting the unsolicited message contamination of wholesale content services
Protecting core network assets against service impacting security incidents
Promoting child protection and safe mobile usage within the brand
Avoiding damaging media publicity

How does NGN Forums leadership benefit your company and its customers

By having a broad based community of vendors, carriers and solution providers sharing industry insight and requirements we are able to bring solutions that communication service providers need to market more quickly. We are also able to lend our own unique insights about security and trusted communications to guide others. The end result is a more vibrant market overall for everyone while providing end usres of communication provider service a better over all experience

To have your company considered for a profile in the Q & A section of this newsletter send an email to pr@ngnforum.org.

NGN Forum IMS Forum Technical Working Groups Update

The NGN IMS Forum has just completed its Business Models for the Development of Applications Over Broadband IP Networks Working Group document in the fourth quarter of 2010. This paper will develop new business models and use cases for applications running over IMS, 3G and 4G networks.

With data still accounting for only a fraction of carriers' revenue, and standard voice minutes all but commoditized, carriers are looking for new sources of revenue (e.g. adding new voice features, and multimedia applications developed by 3^rd party developers). This paper looks at how to open up networks to support innovative business models (including IMS, 4G LTE, 4G Wimax, Security, Service Delivery Platform, Cloud and Smart Grid technologies) that can be integrated with the 'all-IP' business model.

Topics to be covered in this document include:

Business Models for Operators
- The Freemium Business Model
- The two-sided telecoms business model
- Over The Top (OTT) business model
- Pay-as-you-go business model
- Low-cost carrier business model
- Razors and blades business model (Loss Leader)
Challenges for operators
Conclusions
NGN Applications

We are now soliciting input on IMS Business Models and on applications Use Cases for this document. An example of the type of use case we are looking for is enclosed below:

Basic VoIP (Managed)

Over the top (OTT) voice services are un-managed. For example, Google or Skype VoIP services offer only a minimal email support, based on Q&A and user community self-support. While billing is present with the services, there is practically no mechanism to redress a billing error or to correct for a call dropped or a call of poor quality. In contrast a VoIP Managed service provides a number of distinctive characteristics:

Voice quality is monitored. While not actively managed (i.e. there is no guaranty of service), voice quality information is available and stored by the operator for analysis and customer service purposes. For instance, based on a customer complain, an operator can provide a refund
Voice quality can be preset by the user. In this case, the user can choose not to complete a call in case of known network congestion, or to get real-time feedback on the call quality. For example, calls can have a high quality audio path between the caller and the callee and low quality audio on the reverse. In that case, the caller can get feedback, such as beep tone, telling that the other party hears a low quality call.
Voice quality can be guaranteed by the service provider. In that case, there is an underlining assumption that policy control is active in the operator network and as a result the call is actively managed by the service provider

NGN Applications to be covered include the following:

Basic VoIP (Managed)
HD VoIP
Personal Voice with multimedia content
Social Voice with multimedia (OTT provided services)
Personal and Social Voice with multimedia (network provided services)
Personal video with multimedia
Social video with multimedia content
Applications over wireless broadband networks
Applications over High Speed Packet Access Plus (HSPA)
Application Challenge: Unpredictable Success

Please email your questions and contributions to the PR@ngnforum.org. If accepted, they will be featured prominently in this document. Also, please indicate if you want to attribute the contribution to you personally, your company or if you want to make an anonymous contribution.

We encourage NGN telecom operators and vendors to become more involved in helping us move the bar for new IP applications. For additional information and to participate contact us at info@ngnforum.org or visit the IMS website at www.IMSForum.org

Our next IMS Plugfest. and NGN Plugfest. interoperability test event, which will focus on many of these topics and others, will be held in the first quarter of 2011 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH. Registration for this Plugfest and Working Group is now open for any service providers, integrators and vendors who would like to participate (www.imsforum.org/Plugfest). For additional information please contact admin@ngnforum.org

NGN Forum Calendar of Events

See the NGN/IMS Forum at the following 2011 events:

February 2-4: Internet Telephony Conpoference & Ex, Miami
February 2-4: 4G Wireless Evolution, Miami
February 14-17: Mobile World congress, Barcelona
March 20-23: COMPTEL, Las Vegas
March 22-24: CTIA Wireless Spring, Orlando, FL
March 28-30: Mobile Broadband Asia, Singapore
April 9-14: NAB Show, Las Vegas
May 23-26: Management World 2011, Dublin, Ireland
June 6-8: FTTx and Next Generation Access, Berlin
June 14-16: The Cable Show, Chicago, IL

Showcase Your Expertise and Leadership: Call for Speakers

NGN/IMS Forum in the News

The following highlights some recent press coverage of the NGN/IMS Forum:

Recent NGN/IMS Forum Press Releases

Sept. 30, 2009	Testing Technologies GmbH to Participate in the NGN IMS Forum Plugfest 8
Oct. 21, 2009	NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm

Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?

If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum.

All are invited to participate in the industry's first open NGN/IMS Community where Forum members, those involved in various NGN and IMS working groups, the IMS Linkedin group, our industry and colleagues around the world can participate in active, mutually beneficial discussions. Take a moment to register now.

Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:

Verify and certify interoperability, reduce costs and accelerate time to market
Participate in technical working groups focusing on service creation and applications for NGN/IMS architecture, framework and deployment issues
Gain additional visibility through the NGN/IMS Forum's Speakers Bureau, public relations and marketing programs
Showcase member companies at major telecom, cable, and wireless events in North America, Asia, and Europe
Receive current market and technology information through newsletters, reports, white papers and conferences
Gain access to an informed professional network of industry consultants and accredited experts

Have a request? We welcome your feedback on this newsletter.
Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org

2010 Sept Newsletter

admin — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:06:26 -0700

IN THIS ISSUE

Member Q&A

In the News

Telecom TV interview with Michael Khalilian

3Q 2010 • info@IMSForum.org • www.NGNForum.org • www.IMSForum.org

Dear NGN IMS Forum Members and Colleagues,

Apps. play a huge role in network evolution and IP transformation. A new generation of Apps has arrived thanks to the introduction of the iPhone and the increased demand for video applications on mobile networks.

At the CTIA show in March the NGN/IMS Forum™ announced its new Technical Working Group for Applications running on fixed and mobile broadband networks (e.g. 3G/4G/LTE, wireline and cable networks). This Technical Working Group (TWG) will help accelerate the availability of IMS-based applications by providing additional tools and resources to foster the ecosystem of application developers, content creators, network operators, and telecommunications vendors (i.e. network equipment, handset, ICT, and original equipment manufacturers). This working group will play an integral role in our next Plugfest.

Mobile handsets are becoming the platform on which a wide variety of applications can be run. Today’s mobile handsets are not only used for web browsing and email but, increasingly, are becoming sophisticated computing devices that run a wide variety of data applications such as social networking applications, applications to share user-generated content, multi-user games, and music and video streaming. Traditionally, each of these capabilities has been provided by siloed platforms. As mobile networks migrate to 4G/LTE, additional applications will be possible and end users will be looking for a common experience between their fixed and mobile broadband networks.

As carriers deploy IMS networks, applications can be enhanced to create new end user experiences by simultaneously blending voice, data, video and multimedia. This new generation of applications will be able to take advantage of elements of the IMS network, such as QoS and Voice-over LTE (VoLTE), to deliver end-user experiences (e.g. Multi-play: Triple Play, Quadruple Play, M-Play) that are consistent across both fixed and mobile networks.

Because of the explosion of applications, this Working Group and our upcoming Plugfest 9 will concentrate its efforts on application developers to help them better internetwork web 2.0 applications with IMS networks and BSS/OSS systems (including billing, charging and security). These efforts will bring the same level of interoperability enabled by our Plugfests from the realm of protocols, network architectures, hardware and devices to the software and applications space by including Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs) that expose network capabilities such as VoIP, group management, presence and instant messaging.

Our next IMS Plugfest™ and NGN Plugfest™ interoperability test event, which will focus on many of these topics and others, will be held in the fourth quarter of 2010 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH. Registration for this Plugfest and Working Group is now open for any service providers, integrators and vendors who would like to participate (www.imsforum.org/Plugfest). For additional information please contact admin@ngnforum.org

Regards,

Michael Khalilian
President
NGN Forum and IMS Forum

Market Research Corner

New Estimate Sees Mobile App Revenue Reaching $11 Billion in 2014

Smartphone users are downloading increasing numbers of apps, and more of the apps they download come at a price. The result is a supercharged mobile app gold rush that's shattering Yankee Group's previous revenue estimates and reaching a whopping $11 billion by 2014.

In their report, "The Mobile App Gold Rush Speeds Up," Yankee Group sees several factors--increased smartphone shipments, more app stores and more expensive apps--combining to nearly double forecasted mobile app revenue, from $537 million to $1.6 billion in 2010 alone.

While most app developers and store owners will garner a share of the riches, users of Apple's iPhone and AT&T's network download the most apps and generate the most revenue. "Apple's innovative one-click technology and AT&T's exclusive deal for the iPhone put them ahead for now," says Carl Howe, director at Yankee Group and author of the report. "But strong results from T-Mobile suggest that Android will be the next breakout smartphone app platform."

Key findings of the report include:

Paid apps are on the rise. Nearly a third of all apps downloaded today are purchased, compared with just 18 percent a year ago.
Average price per app is up. The overall average paid app costs $2.85, up from $1.99 a year ago.
AT&T and iPhone users download the most. Apple iPhone users download 60 apps per year, three times the average, while AT&T users download 27 apps annually, or 42 percent more than average.
T-Mobile and Android are a close second. T-Mobile, the closest thing to an Android pure play, comes in second for all carriers, with its users downloading more than 18 apps per year on average.
Verizon has the most paid apps. Two-thirds of apps downloaded by Verizon users are paid, the most of any carrier.

New Announcements in the Marketplace

BT offers IP telephony service in U.S.
Network World, 7/6/10
On the same day Verizon announced it was planning to launch a hosted unified communications and collaboration service based on Cisco's solution, BT also announced plans to extend its hosted IP telephony service to business customers in the United States. The BT service, initially launched in the UK in December 2009, also allows businesses to bring converged services to the desktop using BT and Cisco's cloud computing-based technologies.

Cisco to pay up to $112 million in Power-over-Ethernet patent case

Foundry, Extreme, Enterasys, 3Com also settle with patent acquirer in PoE case
By Jim Duffy, Network World
July 19, 2010 03:30 PM ET
Network-1 Security Solutions, an acquirer and licensor of intellectual property, says it has settled its Power-over-Ethernet patent infringement case against Cisco and five other companies. The litigation was initiated in February 2008 by Network-1 against Cisco and its Linksys division, Foundry Networks (now Brocade), Extreme Networks, Enterasys, 3Com (now HP), Adtran and Netgear. At issue was alleged infringement of Network-1's Remote Power Patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,218,930. Read More.

Mu Studio enables customers to quickly automate testing of any IMS deployment scenario, no matter how complex, even at scale.
Mu Dynamics held a complimentary webinar on July 29th at 10am PDT.

Each IMS deployment scenario is unique; service offerings are highly personalized, the number of protocols involved is huge, with many proprietary extensions, and the number of end user devices continues to expand. As providers aim to deliver value-added applications on their IMS infrastructures such as revenue-critical services (like voice), carriers are faced with a challenging test situation. Today’s test tools tend to be based on specifications, but all the interesting services are highly customized. Test tools based on standards are less relevant over time, and waiting for test equipment vendors to deliver test content means delays in rolling out new services. As a result, testing for interoperability, resilience and scale in an IMS deployment is a labor-intensive, expensive and, above all, time-consuming process – time that carriers and their vendors do not have if they want to compete in today’s fast-paced market.

Mu’s unique approach to testing replicates complete service functionality by accurately emulating new devices and flows based on real network traffic. Mu Studio uses actual service interactions to test IMS services, using its patent-pending Active Service Replication (ASR) technology. It automatically transforms complex multi-host, multi-layer service interactions, taken from live traffic captures, into test scenarios. This approach is ideal for testing complex deployment scenarios such as those within IMS.

Mu Studio has built-in protocol intelligence for key IMS protocols like H.248, HTTP, SIP and Diameter, as well as the ability to model multi-protocol and multi-host scenarios. For the first time, your tests can intelligently interact with applications exactly as an actual system would, providing unprecedented depth and breadth of coverage.

Mu hosted this complimentary webinar on July 29th at 10:00am (PDT). Please listen to this webinar to learn why Mu Studio is the only solution to accurately test your complex services for interoperability, resilience and scalability.

Click here to register to view the recorded version of this webniar: http://www.mudynamics.com/forms/scale-webinar.html

NGN Forum Q & A

Q & A with Suresh Bhandarkar, Tech Mahindra

Please provide us with some background on your company?

Established in 1986, Tech Mahindra is a global solutions provider and systems integration (SI) company focused on servicing the converged communications industry. We leverage our SI thought leadership, global experience, vendor partnerships and repository of industry best practices to accelerate the rollout of NGN applications and M-Play NGN services to enable service providers to quickly benefit from the delivery of quadruple play voice, video, internet and mobile services over broadband via wireless, cable and fixed networks. Our business transformation services covering IT (B/OSS and applications), IT Operations, Networks, Security and BPM help service providers generate growth, enhance operational and cost efficiencies, increase customer retention and improve new service innovation.

What IMS services and products does your company offer?

For product companies, Tech Mahindra develops applications (session control, presence and seamless mobility), SDK/API (OSA/Parlay-X), orchestration logic, IVR, Media Servers, CTI, AAA (RADIUS, DIAMETER), and IMS clients. We also offer services like, interoperability testing and migration from HLR to HSS.

For service providers, we offer services like, E2E interoperability testing, Service Design, IP Network Design, IMS ITT vendor evaluation, NIT model design, NIT for Business VoIP, Design validation, Test specs for inter-CS (SIP/SIP-I), H.248 test specs for CS-MGW / MSAN, Signalling interworking test design, CPE interoperability testing, MVCT, Model build and E2E BB Test execution (NIT).

How can the IMS Forum’s Plugfest benefit Tech Mahindra and your customers?

The primary goal of the Plugfests is to ensure that products are compliant with the standards and can interoperate. These quarterly test events bring together leading IMS vendors from around the globe who exchange ideas to promote the adoption of IMS. Here, competing vendors collaborate to build real, full-featured, IMS networks.

For product vendors, these events save product and service development time through access to multi-vendor interoperability test beds, leading test equipment, IMS cores and applications, and multi-protocol engineering expertise; reduce time-to-market and acceptance testing cycles by pinpointing bugs and conformance issues, and validate services and products in a respected third-party lab.

For systems integrators like us, these events help gain early access to, judge the maturity of, and understand the ease with which products and technologies can be integrated into our customers’ networks.

For our service provider customers, these events provide proof-points about the interoperability among different product vendors. The “IMS Report Card” resulting from these events addresses myths that have held back the widespread adoption of standards-compliant IMS solutions. The Report Card recounts several commonly held myths in the industry and provides proof-points based on the experience of the companies participating in the Plugfests that disprove these myths.

How does a verification and certification process aid the development of IMS interoperability/standards?

Enforcing conformance to standards is a great way to march towards interoperability. But in reality, standards are not always clear about what they meant to say. It is also necessary to understand the importance of what the standards do not say. Multiple interpretations of standards result in multiple implementations. Even similar interpretations of standards often result in multiple implementations. Verification and certification via Interoperability testing is therefore required to verify both the standard and its implementation.

Plugfest events can be leveraged by the participants to share their views on standards and industry best practices and to identify shortcomings, areas that need clarity, areas that need additional coverage and areas that do not need any coverage.

What has your membership in the IMS Forum accomplished for your company?

Our goal is to provide our customers with solutions by integrating products that are compliant with industry standards. Membership in the IMS Forum has helped us validate that these products are compliant with the standards and that the products from different vendors interoperate at network-level, signalling and control-level, applications-level and B/OSS-level. Participation in regular meetings of the forum has exposed us to multiple players in this space and their views and insights on IMS standards and technologies. This forum has provided us an excellent platform to get industry exposure and it has also provided us an opportunity to demonstrate our solutions and services. This is a great place to learn and share knowledge and best practices.

Who are some of Tech Mahindra customers and what IMS services are they deploying?

Our customers are global service providers (fixed line, wireless and cable operators), telecom equipment vendors and telecom software vendors. Most of our service provider customers are deploying IMS to be able to offer converged IP services, including VoIP, IPTV and FMC. Our cable customers are upgrading their networks using PacketCable2.0/IMS architecture. Some of our wireless customers are deploying IMS in preparation for rolling out LTE networks.

What are some areas of IMS where you have found challenges for operators?

Operator challenges can be classified into 3 categories: Business, Technical and Operational.

On the business front, it’s a challenge to introduce a paradigm shift by way of creating a new architecture that flattens the legacy network architecture and defines a common service control layer across all types of networks, supporting all types of services.

On the technical front, continuously evolving standards, SCP/AS integration issues and security issues remain a concern.

On the operational front, operators are concerned about operations and management related to integration of OSS, BSS and NMS systems with IMS.

Are there any other critical benchmarks that need to take place in this IMS evolution?

Whether deployed for next-generation services, or as a replacement for legacy network technologies, IMS works across network equipment from different vendors and supports a growing number of real-time applications, including VoIP, video, interactive conferencing, and other mission-critical data applications.

All these varied services come with a very high degree of expectation from the user community in terms of user experience and accompanying service-level agreements. To meet these expectations, service providers need end-to-end network performance management and visibility, which helps them to ensure high-quality, reliable services to their customers, independent of the composition of the underlying network infrastructure. In order to do performance management, critical benchmarks are required to be executed to collect measurements such as fail rate, response times or round-trip delays within an IMS network. Additionally, they can be used to identify scalability or usability problems of the IMS network under heavy load conditions. Benchmarks should be defined for both IMS as a whole as well as its various subsystems and should include metrics that are related to interoperability and metrics that are related to end-to-end quality of service. QoS should take into account factors such as multiple services, multiple technologies and real-time admission control.

What are some of the key factors for IMS success in the industry?

IMS holds great promise to be the technology of choice for offering multimedia services over 3G networks. But it is too complex and costly. Efforts are needed to simplify it and reduce its cost. Costs will go down if there are key drivers that will result in a strong market growth. Move towards convergence between fixed and mobile networks is a big driver for adopting IMS. Another big driver lurking on the horizon is the migration towards LTE as the technology of choice for 4G networks. Voice over LTE networks using IMS will result in greater adoption of IMS. Thus, IMS success is closely associated with the uptake of LTE network deployments worldwide.

To have your company considered for a profile in the Q & A section of this newsletter send an email to pr@ngnforum.org.

NGN Forum IMS Forum Technical Working Groups Update

B/OSS
In addition to founding the new Applications over Broadband Working Group, we have finalized three new Working Group Papers, which are summarized below:

Interoperability Challenges in Diameter Implementations, and
IMS AAA Architecture: The Diameter Advantage
BSS/OSS & Security for Services in NGN/IMS Paradigm Guidelines for Implementation

Interoperability Challenges in Diameter Implementations
The main purpose of the first white paper is to explain the advantages of this protocol and the reasons why this protocol fits with AAA functionalities. What are the main concepts that are involved by the Diameter protocol? Where is this protocol used inside the IMS architecture? The answer to this latter question will demonstrate the importance of the protocol in next generation communication infrastructures. As Diameter is designed as an improvement of the RADIUS protocol, a lot of advantages of this protocol are based on the design of the protocol itself.

IMS AAA Architecture: The Diameter Advantage
Diameter is an AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) protocol for applications such as network access or IP mobility. It has been embraced by 3GPP and ETSI standard bodies as the foundation for AAA functionalities in the Next Generation Networks based on IP Multimedia Subsystem, thereby designing a multitude of applications and interfaces on it. With the advent of Wimax and LTE Diameter is becoming the obvious choice of the network providers to implement in these architectures. However, different interpretations and implementations of new standards may lead to incompatibilities between vendors. Also, evolving standards may require altering implementations to keep up with specification changes.
This white paper focuses on the interoperability issues and challenges observed in diameter implementations in NGN networks. It encompasses the various practices and concerns related to diameter usages and interworking such as, cross-release issues, contradictions and ambiguity in the specifications thereby leading to different implementations, inconsistent rules and guidelines for defining new diameter applications, backwards incompatibility, version handling, etc. in the deployment and realization of any diameter based interface/applications in IMS/NGN architecture. It also delves into examples of diameter parameter interpretations and handling in various features and the current and best practices followed for the same.

BSS/OSS & Security for Services in NGN/IMS Paradigm Guidelines for Implementation

BSS/OSS solutions for a next generation landscape must work as one with the network while unifying critical business functions to better manage and effectively monetize NGN services and the next generation subscriber experience. This will call for solutions that are open and keep the customer experience at heart while adhering to industry standards and providing the much needed flexibility to accommodate new requirements. The BSS/OSS reality for most operators today is one of multiple, discrete systems that each have their own ways of looking at and managing data requiring both timely and costly integration while hindering marketing agility and the customer experience.

Innovation in this next generation world will need to be driven not only by network advancements but also via an open and flexible BSS/OSS infrastructure that will allow CSPs to realize operational efficiencies in terms of new service introduction and customer management. Thus the BSS/OSS strategy will need to be aligned with the network strategy. This Working Group Paper provides guidelines for implementation of BSS/OSS and Security Services in an NGN IMS Architecture. It also suggests best practices in the following areas:

Security and Reliability
BSS/OSS Unification
Migration to IP Networks
Deploying an IP Multimedia Subsystem network

IMS/NGN Rating & Charging Impacts
Online vs. Offline Rating/Charging

To receive a copy of these Working Group documents please contact: admin@ngnforum.org.

NGN Forum Calendar of Events

See the NGN/IMS Forum at the following 2010 events:

September 12-15: COMPTEL, Dallas
October 4-6: Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, Los Angeles, CA, Board/Working Group Meeting
October 4-6: 4G Wireless Evolution
October 6-8: CTIA Wireless Fall, San Francisco
Oct. 14-15: Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin**
October 19-21: 4G World, Chicago; Board/Working Group Meeting
October 22, 2010: IIT VoIP Conference, Chicago, speaker
November 4-5: IIR IMS World Forum, Brussels
November 9-11: Management Forum Americas, Orlando
February 14 – 17: Mobile World congress, Barcelona

Payam Maveddat, Vice President - Next Gen Wireless Switching Solutions, Mavenir Systems and Michael Khalilian, Chairman and President, NGN IMS Forum at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2010.

** This year Fraunhofer FOKUS has set up a unique program giving newcomers and experts from all over the world an overview and update on the state of the art and recent developments in the challenging field of converging telecommunications, Internet and entertainment. The theme for the upcoming International FOKUS conference is Business and Technical Challenges of Seamless Service Provision in Converging Next Generation Fixed and Mobile Networks. Please note that the number of seats is limited to 290-300 people in order to preserve the "family atmosphere" that makes this event stand out from others.

Showcase Your Expertise and Leadership: Call for Speakers

NGN/IMS Forum in the News

The following highlights some recent press coverage of the NGN/IMS Forum:

Recent NGN/IMS Forum Press Releases

Sept. 30, 2009	Testing Technologies GmbH to Participate in the NGN IMS Forum Plugfest 8
Oct. 21, 2009	NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm

Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?

If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum.

Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:

Verify and certify interoperability, reduce costs and accelerate time to market
Participate in technical working groups focusing on service creation and applications for NGN/IMS architecture, framework and deployment issues
Gain additional visibility through the NGN/IMS Forum's Speakers Bureau, public relations and marketing programs
Showcase member companies at major telecom, cable, and wireless events in North America, Asia, and Europe
Receive current market and technology information through newsletters, reports, white papers and conferences
Gain access to an informed professional network of industry consultants and accredited experts

Have a request? We welcome your feedback on this newsletter.
Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org

1Q2010

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:03:53 -0800

IN THIS ISSUE

Member Q&A

In the News

1Q 2010 • info@IMSForum.org • www.NGNForum.org • www.IMSForum.org

NGN/IMS Plugfest 9 Launch and New Technical Working Groups in 2010

Dear NGN Forum / IMS Forum members and colleagues,

Happy holidays to all and looking forward to a successful 2010 year for all.

The NGN and IMS Forums' Plugfests are the industry's premier interoperability events covering NGN services over wireless 3G, 4G, LTE, WiMAX, wireline xDSL, cable, fiber optics broadband and IMS architectures.

We are pleased to announce that the Diameter and Control plane TWG and interoperability group successfully completed their initial guideline documents and testing/IOT activities at Plugfest 8 in October, 2009. The forum technical and business group is now progressing to the next stage of releasing all the test documentation and planning for the next Plugfest event. Our next IMS Plugfest™ and NGN Plugfest™ interoperability test event, Plugfest 9, will take place in the first week of June 2010 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH.

The NGN Forum & IMS Forum themes for this Plugfest are NGN Network and IMS Rich Applications deployment. Topics under consideration will include:

IMS core, CSCF, AS, HSS, Policy
Inter and intra network testing area of key interest, billing services interdomain scenarios, roaming users, visited networks scenarios, applications presence, voice, video, user agents
SDP / Rich Communications Services (RCS) / Voice Features and IMS Applications
VoIP / SIP / QoS
Security and Reliability
Billing - off-line charging and on-line charging
Control Plane and Diameter
Voice over LTE/4G
IP Video (IPTV)
Wireless and Smart Grids
Messaging, IP traffic, presence, IM and termination, integration
Implementation of Convergence: integrating legacy to NGN
Transition 3G to 4G LTE and WiMAX
Metrics for standard sets of SIP call flows in IMS and NGN
IPv6, and
others

We will define network topologies based on the participants’ requirements for these tests. We are also excited about the soon to be released IP BSS/OSS and security architecture guidelines to be released in January 2010.

Planning is well underway at the NGN Forum technical working groups (TWG), which have been holding regular joint sessions for the planning of Plugfest 9.

The latest addition under review to the technical working groups plan for 2010 is going to be in areas of EPC (includes Packet Core, AAA, Policy, DPI etc.), VoIP/LTE, Service Delivery Platform (SDP), IP Video/IPTv, IMS BSS, NGN Security and 4G Technical and Business Marketing Working Groups. The groups launch will be announced early 2010. Companies interested in TWG participation and demo / interoperability PF9 testing should contact Admin@NGNForum.org.

Starting 2010, the working groups are meeting every other week to define TWG objectives and Plugfest/IOT planning.

The NGN Forum and IMS Forum are the only industry associations dedicated to interoperability and certification of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next Generation (NGN) applications and services for fixed, mobile and cable networks. Participation in NGN IMS Plugfests and Technical working Groups is open to all companies. We look forward to your participation in our 2010 Working Groups and in Plugfests. For more information please contact Info@NGNForum.org or visit www.NGNForum.org, www.IMSForum.org.

Regards,
Michael Khalilian
NGN Forum, IMS Forum, ISC, IPCC, VoIP Forums, IP Multimedia Forums

Market Research Corner

According to a November 4 Wireless Week article, “Operator Heavyweights Throw Support Behind IMS”, several industry big wigs including AT&T, Orange, Vodafone and Ericsson have voiced their support for IMS to handle voice and SMS traffic on LTE networks. IMS is the protocol of choice by the 3GPP standards body but proponents of alternate protocols argue that an interim technology is needed to handle voice and data over LTE before IMS is adopted. One of these interim technologies, voice over LTE via generic access (VoLGA), has pushed the industry to adopt VoLGA as an interim measure. So far, that effort has only attracted one operator: Germany's T-Mobile.

Infonetics Research: VoIP services bring in $21 billion for service providers in 1H09; strong demand continues Market research firm Infonetics Research recently released its biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report, which tracks business and residential/SOHO voice over IP services and includes a North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix that analyzes and ranks the top service providers in the VoIP business services market.

Demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow even as spending in other communication areas tightens. For the first half of 2009, the worldwide VoIP services market grew to $20.7 billion. Residential VoIP services remain healthy, comprising the majority of worldwide VoIP services revenue, and subscribers are up 14% from the end of 2008. On the business VoIP side, while managed IP PBX revenue growth has slowed in line with IP PBX shipments, Infonetics is expecting IP Centrex and hosted UC service revenue to grow 26% year-over-year in 2009.

Key findings of the report include:

IP connectivity services currently make up about a third of total VoIP business service revenue, growing to 40% of the total by 2013 (managed IP PBX services and hosted VoIP and UC services make up the balance)
The current sweet spot of the North American IP Centrex market is small business (those with fewer than 100 employees)
Roughly two-thirds of all IP Centrex seats sold in the first half of 2009 went to small businesses
While the largest VoIP services opportunities are in North America and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), demand for VoIP services is growing fast in Asia Pacific and Central and Latin America. For the first half of 2009, Japan's NTT, France Telecom, and Comcast in North America retain their leadership as the world's largest residential VoIP service providers, together holding nearly 20% of the world's VoIP subscribers
The number of residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers is forecast to top 225 million by 2013

Infonetics' VoIP and UC services report provides worldwide and regional market size, forecasts, and analysis of residential VoIP services, business VoIP and UC services, and residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers. Business voice services tracked include managed IP PBX services, hosted VoIP and unified communication services (IP Centrex by business size, UC applications, UC telephony), and IP connectivity services (VoIP VPN/IP access, SIP trunking, IP integrated access). For more information visit: http://www.infonetics.com/login.

NGN Forum Q & A

Q & A with Alice Bartram, AVP Marketing, Billing & Active Customer Management, Comverse

Please provide us with some brief background on your company?

Comverse is the world’s leading provider of software and systems enabling value-added services for voice, messaging, mobile Internet and mobile advertising; converged billing and active customer management; and IP communications. Comverse’s extensive customer base spans more than 130 countries and covers over 500 communication service providers serving more than two billion subscribers. The company’s innovative product portfolio enables communication service providers to unleash the value of the network for their customers by making their networks smarter. Comverse’s solutions support flexible deployment models, including in-network, hosted and managed services, and can run on circuit-switched, IP, IMS or converged network environments. Comverse is a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc. (CMVT.PK).

What IMS and NGN services and products does your company offer today and what are some of the key differentiators for your company in this market? What are your future product plans?

Comverse is one of the only vendors to provide the entire services value chain: network elements, rich communication services and converged ordering, provisioning, billing and customer management, providing a one-stop shop while ensuring maximum interoperability. Our objective is to make operators’ networks smarter by creating a Communication Environment which features solutions for BSS, value added services, and IP communications based on a holistic platform, truly enabling the network and billing to effectively work as ONE.

Just as IMS promises to converge and unify networks under a common platform operators’ BSS/OSS environments need to be comprehensive enough to support any network, any service and any payment type, ensuring that next generation services and bundles can be accurately provisioned, ordered, rated, charged and billed. BSS/OSS capabilities – from marketing, sales and customer management through to charging and billing – need to be provided as a unified whole. This means a single code base, with all functionality built around a single data model, supported by a single product catalog and with a single operations, maintenance and security approach across the whole solution. This approach to BSS must also sit firmly in the network – to the level of call/session control.

The Comverse ONE Billing & Active Customer Management solution is the only converged BSS solution to unify marketing, sales, ordering, customer management and billing around a single data model and product catalog. The solution supports next generation charging interfaces such as Diameter and SIP and can support next generation business models with an ability to support any network, any service, and any payment type. Built on a strong market proven heritage of both in-network engineering as well as IT based financial systems Comverse ONE supports BSS needs today and more importantly in a next generation world by providing:

One complete real-time subscriber view.
Multi-dimensional policy management (beyond network & service allocation, addresses authorization, rating, charging, identity management (enterprise v. personal) and financial liability management).
Financial control.
Marketing agility.

Comverse also is continuing investments in IMS and Telco 2.0 to enable Telcos to open their networks to develop 3rd party applications via APIs.

How do the NGN and IMS Forum’s Plugfests benefit your company and its customers?

The Plugfest(s) benefit Comverse by enabling us to validate our solutions – demonstrating to operators that our products are interoperable with other vendor solutions, especially with regards to Diameter. Our customers benefit from being assured that they have bought into products that can work well in a multi-vendor environment. Additionally it enables us to prove that Comverse ONE is a future-proof solution truly capable of handling any network and service.

How does a verification and certification process aid in the development of NGN and IMS interoperability/standards?

The verification and certification processes provide a framework to our potential customers for evaluating interoperability claims. It also gives an indication of our overall strategy regarding interoperability and of our willingness to reach out to potential partners. Ultimately the process uncovers issues which can be fed back into the standardization bodies, while establishing best practices and common terminology.

Who are some of your customers and what NGN and IMS services are they deploying?

Over twenty of our customers are utilizing UMTS networks. UMTS is 3G; however it is the underlying technology being developed into 4G. Some of our customers that utilize UMTS networks and the advanced services they are offering are detailed below:

Play (Poland) offers video, video calling and media content
MTEL (Montenegro) video calling, call completion and roaming services
GTEL (Vietnam) offers ringback tones, GPRS, Messaging, call back and USSD menu browsing
Smart Communications (Phillipines) offers video calling, video mail, high-speed mobile internet access, GPRS and call completion

What are some areas of NGN and IMS where you have found challenges for operators?

Communication Service Providers (CSPs) continue to focus mainly on applications and enabling networks with little thought or strategy formulated around the provisioning, rating, charging, ordering, fulfillment and customer care aspects associated with NGN services and the NGN customer experience. The main challenges from a BSS perspective are charging flexibility, quality of service control and bundling flexibility across multiple services.

One of the fundamental requirements behind any IMS and NGN services strategy should be whether the BSS environment can effectively monetize such investments, while also ensuring end-to-end quality of service to maximize the subscriber experience meaning that in-network capabilities and a real-time, holistic view of the subscriber are essential.

So while a fast, effective and up-to-date network certainly plays its part in providing the subscriber with a “next generation” experience, converged billing and interactive customer management are vitally important factors which will ultimately determine how effectively operators will monetize network investments and NGN services. Carriers need to understand in real-time who is using which services and applications - across product families and devices - to personalize real-time offers based on profiles and consumption levels, in order to tailor pricing, or even monitor usage to limit financial exposure.

Today, operators’ eco-systems remain a patchwork of discrete, service-specific systems – all having their own way of interpreting and managing data, creating inefficient business processes, duplication, and both causing and preserving capability gaps while keeping long term cost of ownership high. This approach does not allow effective bundling nor does it allow accurate charging thus most CSPs are relegated to proceed with the flat-rate business model, which does not allow them to fully extract service value.

Are there any other critical benchmarks that need to take place in this IMS NGN evolution?

Critical benchmarks include: wide spread interoperability, end-to-end quality of service control– if you commit a certain QoS to a subscriber, the operator will need to ensure that the QoS is followed through the entire network – and seamless service transitions across networks and devices. This of course will need to be supported by a comprehensive BSS solution – with an ability to support multiple dimensions of convergence – that is network facing and can blend customer information such as profile, usage and status, with network knowledge. So when a customer is accessing multiple services within a single session, the BSS infrastructure would be updated and know how to charge accordingly. Or if a subscriber is in a low bandwidth area and is trying to download a video, the BSS would know and offer alternatives to prevent the subscriber from having a poor service experience.

What are some of the key factors for NGN and IMS success in the industry?

Operators need to build a business case centered on the customer experience when planning NGN and IMS strategies. CSPs need to ask themselves:

Is my existing BSS environment capable of supporting a holistic customer experience across all of my services? Across all touch points: Web, IVR, call center, device?
Can I support personalized real-time marketing?
Can I offer spending control and payment flexibility?
Does my BSS environment effectively support seamless service transitions across networks, devices and payment types?
Can my BSS environment support real-time policy management, rating and charging for all or some targeted services?

Without a holistic view of the customer, and the ability to quickly provision and accurately rate, charge and bill any service across any network or device, the success of IMS and NGN investments is weakened. To ensure a high-quality and seamless user experience, BSS/OSS capabilities – from marketing, sales and customer management through to charging and billing – need to be provided as a unified whole. Only this approach enables Active Customer Management: the ability to manage all customers consistently in a real-time interactive manner regardless of how the customer chooses to pay for services or interacts with the operator. Delivered through a set of unified applications that support an operator’s sales, marketing, fulfillment and customer management and self-service needs, this new paradigm provides data consistency ensuring one complete view, accessible by both the operator and the end-user, regardless of customer touch point.

To have your company considered for a profile in the Q & A section of this newsletter send an email to pr@ngnforum.org.

NGN Forum IMS Forum Technical Working Groups Update

The NGN Forum would like to thank Plugfest 8 participants, contributors, advisors, sponsors and the test management of the following companies for a successful test event in October 2008:

Comverse • HP • MU Dynamics • Marben Products/NE Technologies • NTT-AT • RADVISION • Tekelec • NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology of Japan) • US Government Communications Groups (NCS/DHS) • Sonus Networks • Tektronix • Testing Technologies GmbH • Alcatel-Lucent • Acision • Aricent • IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) • UNH-IOL • T-Mobile • Intel • T-Mobile • Intel • Billing & OSS World • CTIA • GSMA • Informa • NGN Magazine (TMC) • Supercomm • TMF and Trendsmedia.

The IMS / NGN Diameter and Control plane interoperability group successfully completed their testing and IOT activities at Plugfest 8. The group is now progressing to the next stage of releasing all the test documentation and planning for the next Plugfest event. The group was formed in 2008 and chaired by Bruno Deslandes (Marben-Products). Some of the member participants included Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Aricent, HP, Mu Dynamics, Radvision, Sonus, Testing Technologies, Wipro, Data Connection Ltd (DCL).

Technology and business marketing working groups completed the draft release of IP BSS/Security documents, Plugfest 8 test plan and are launching the Plugfest 9 IOT group in January 2010. Also, the new working groups will be launched by February 2010. Any company who is interested in partnerships, research or interoperability testing is welcome to contact the Forum for more information. Starting January, the working groups will meet every other week to define objectives and Plugfest planning. The following Working Group meetings were held since Plugfest 8 in October 2009:

Plugfest 9 initial planning meeting at PF8 event, Presentation is available, send request to (admin@ngnforum.org)
Plugfest 8 event (test report plan for Jan 2010)
IP BSS/OSS & Security (on-going, initial document plan for Jan 2010)
Control plane/Diameter (completed the initial testing and documents)
Supercomm09 technology board meetings (Oct 2009)
IIT VoIP (Oct 2009)
Tele-management OSS meetings (Dec 2009)

NGN Forum Calendar of Events

In addition to moderating panels at the Internet Telephony and 4G shows this fall The NGN IMS Forum also participated in:

· Oct. 21, 2009: Supercomm, Chicago, IL, Special Session#1: IMS Forum Presents: Results from Plugfest 8 - Interoperability for IP Applications & B/OSS and Charging in Converged IMS & NGN networks

· Oct. 22, 2009: Supercomm, Chicago, IL, Telecom Goes Hollywood - Networks for the Digital Age

· Oct. 23, 2009: Supercomm, Chicago, IL, Panel Session: No Strings Attached - Wireless Networking Growth & Challenges

· Oct. 29, 2009: VoIP Conference & Expo at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, NGN Networks - Transitions and operations and VoIP and NGN Networks Mini-conference

· Dec. 8-10, 2009: TMF, Orlando, FL

Calendar of upcoming conferences:

· Jan. 20-22, 2010: Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, Miami, FL

· Jan. 20-22, 2010: ITExpo/4GWE, Los Angeles, CA

· Jan. 27-28, 2010: TMF, Singapore

· Feb. 15-18, 2010: Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain

· March 14-17, 2010: CompTel, Nashville, TN

· March 23-25, 2010: CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2010, San Diego, CA

· April 10-15, 2010: NAB, Las Vegas, NV

· May 11-13, 2010: NCTA, Los Angels, CA

· June 9-11, 2010: Billing & OSS World 2010, Washington, DC

· June 9-11, 2010: VON Conference & Expo 2010, South Beach, FL

· June 15-18, 2010: CommunicAsia 2010, Singapore

Showcase Your Expertise and Leadership: Call for Speakers

The NGN Forum and IMS Forum invites members to join its exclusive Speakers' Bureau. Member companies have an excellent opportunity to market their companies and senior executives while representing the Forum at future trade shows and conferences. Simply contact us with a copy of the proposed speaker's bio and indicate any specific NGN and IMS-related speaking topics and expertise. Speaking topic abstracts of one or two paragraphs are especially helpful. Please send to: pr@ngnforum.org.

NGN/IMS Forum in the News

The following highlights some recent press coverage of the NGN/IMS Forum:

9/24/2009	Telephony
Services, LTE help renew IMS push
10/21/2009	Supercomm Show Daily
NGN/IMS Forum announce Plugfest results
10/21/2009	Telephony
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results ...
10/21/2009	TMCNET.com
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Host Plugfest 8 at SuperComm
10/21/2009	Wireless Week
FirstNews Briefs for October 21, 2009
10/21/2009	Wireless Business & Technology
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm ...
10/21/2009	Yahoo!Finance
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm
10/21/2009	TMCNet.com
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm
10/21/2009	SYS-CON
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm
10/21/2009	Dallas Morning News
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm
10/21/2009	Northwest Cable News
NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm
11/2/2009	VON/Billing World Blog
Will IMS Help the Smartphone Industry?
11/4/2009	ITWire
ITU to promote interoperability of ICT products
11/6/2009	Pipeline
NewsWatch
11/10/2009	Fierce Telecom
Diameter in IMS: Why real world IP service testing is here to stay
12/16/2009	Fierce Telecom
IMS: Can it reliably deliver Voice over LTE (VoLTE)?
12/19/2009	Fierce Telecom
IMS: Can it reliably deliver Voice over LTE (VoLTE)?
12/9/2009	Telecom TV at TMF
Telecom TV interview with Michael Khalilian

Recent NGN/IMS Forum Press Releases

Sept. 30, 2009	Testing Technologies GmbH to Participate in the NGN IMS Forum Plugfest 8
Oct. 21, 2009	NGN Forum and IMS Forum Announces Plugfest 8 Results at Supercomm

Why Join the NGN Forum or IMS Forum?

If you are interested in joining the NGN/IMS Forum, Plugfests or in participating in any of the working groups or marketing programs, please contact the NGN/IMS Forum.

Our members are shaping the future of the NGN and IMS. Joining the NGN/IMS Forum enables members to:

Verify and certify interoperability, reduce costs and accelerate time to market
Participate in technical working groups focusing on service creation and applications for NGN/IMS architecture, framework and deployment issues
Gain additional visibility through the NGN/IMS Forum's Speakers Bureau, public relations and marketing programs
Showcase member companies at major telecom, cable, and wireless events in North America, Asia, and Europe
Receive current market and technology information through newsletters, reports, white papers and conferences
Gain access to an informed professional network of industry consultants and accredited experts

Have a request? We welcome your feedback on this newsletter.
Press Contact: pr@ngnforum.org

3Q 2009 Newsletter

admin — Sat, 3 Oct 2009 20:01:04 -0700

IN THIS ISSUE

Member Q&A

In the News