3GPP Release 8 = 3GPP IMS + ETSI TISPAN

Interesting development that happened last month at the 3GPP plenary meeting in Busan, Korea earlier this month, an agreement was reached on how to proceed with Common IMS to meet the needs of fixed, mobile, broadband and wireless users.

In cooperation with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has re-chartered a services group tasked with common ETSI-3GPP development of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Version 8.

Both standards bodies hailed the early June agreement, reached during a meeting in Busan, Korea, as an effective way to keep 3GPP IMS and ETSI Telecoms & Internet converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks (TISPAN) work.

Both IMS and TISPAN comprise next-generation network standards efforts designed to forge a higher signaling and control plane infrastructure layer to support delivery of content and applications to subscribers across any fixed or mobile network or device.

“ETSI TISPAN has taken the first steps in migrating fixed IMS requirements to 3GPP in a co-operation that will prevent fragmentation of IMS standards,” Dr. Walter Weigel, ETSI Director-General, said. “A Common IMS, developed in one place, is a big step forward and will bring enormous economies of scale and reductions in capital and operational costs.”

Common IMS developments will form part of 3GPP Release 8, which is expected to be functionally frozen by end 2007.

“Over the next few months we must stabilize the Release 8 requirements and absorb the incoming Common IMS work,” Stephen Hayes, Ericsson Inc., 3GPP TSG-SA Chair Stephen Hayes of Ericsson Inc., said. “3GPP has a history of successfully meeting challenges and I have no doubt we will meet these challenges as well.”