THE IP MULTIMEDIA SUBSYSTEM (IMS) & THE MOBILE

INTERNET

Opportunities for the Mobile Operator

Amanda O’Farrell

ITT Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Brendan Tierney

Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland

Keywords: IMS, Mobile Internet, Location-based M-Commerce, SIP, Mobile Operators, Critical Success Factors.

Abstract: The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a new mobile communications architecture, which enables many

new and innovative services, and can extend the possibilities of mobile Internet application development.

These mobile Internet applications and the IMS, are considered in terms of the impact that they can have on

the critical success factors (CSFs) of mobile operators. The CSFs identified are particular to mobile

operators that are competing in a highly saturated (in terms of mobile penetration) marketplace, and that are

facing the threat of increasing competition.

1 INTRODUCTION

When most people think of the Internet, they think

of desktop PCs. However while that was

substantially true five years ago, it is out of date

today. By the end of 2003, there were 1.4 billion

mobile users, serving about 25% of the world’s

population (Keshav, 2005). In comparison, there

were only 607 million PCs (Keshav, 2005).

Therefore, mobile phones, in terms of sheer numbers

alone, are the dominant platform for Internet access

(Keshav, 2005).

Therefore the aim of this paper is to look at the

IP Multimedia System, and the potential it offers for

mobile Internet application development. In the Irish

marketplace, operators are facing increasing

competition in the shape of Mobile Virtual Network

Operators (MVNOs). This represents a real

economic threat, as the Irish market is already highly

saturated in terms of mobile penetration rates, and so

increasing their subscriber base is not an option in

terms of increasing their revenues.

The goal of this paper is to identify the CSFs of

mobile operators in such a marketplace, and assess

the impact of IMS and the mobile Internet on the

CSFs.

The findings of this paper are based on primary

(in conjunction with one of the major Irish mobile

operators) and secondary research in the areas of

both IMS and the mobile Internet.

This paper is composed as follows: Section 2

describes the IP Multimedia Subsystem and the

CSFs of the mobile operator. Section 3 considers the

business case for mobile location-based services and

presents the role of the Integrated Information

Service Provider. Section 4 assesses the impact of

IMS and the mobile Internet on the CSFs previously

identified.

2 THE IP MULTIMEDIA

SUBSYSTEM (IMS)

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a new

architecture designed specifically for mobile

networks, which allows for the provision of IP

telecommunication services – for example, rich

multimedia and VoIP (Ericsson AB, 2004a; Tadault

et al., 2004). It is a standardised approach, which has

been defined by the Third Generation partnership

253

O’Farrell A. and Tierney B. (2007).

THE IP MULTIMEDIA SUBSYSTEM (IMS) & THE MOBILE INTERNET - Opportunities for the Mobile Operator.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - SAIC, pages 253-256

DOI: 10.5220/0002349302530256

 SciTePress

Project (3GPP) (Ericsson AB, 2004a; Tadault et al.,

2004).

According to 3G Americas (2004), IMS was

designed to fill the gap between the existing

telecommunications technology and Internet

technology. 3G Americas (2004) describes it as

enabling the convergence of data, speech and mobile

network technology over an IP-based infrastructure.

IMS is designed in such a way as to enable and

enhance real-time, multimedia mobile services such

as rich voice services, video telephony, messaging,

and conferencing (3G Americas, 2004).

2.1 IMS and the CSFs of Mobile

Operators

The IMS architecture presents a number of

opportunities to the mobile operator. However

before we consider these opportunities it is

important to consider the critical success factors

(CSFs) for mobile operators which find themselves

in a market that has high mobile penetration rates,

such as Ireland.

During this study the CSFs for the mobile

operators in such a marketplace were found to be:

 Expand Service Offerings and Revenues

 Control of Subscriber and Business

Relationships

 Decrease Time-to-Market

 Decrease Costs.

These critical success factors identify the areas in

which a mobile operator must be successful in order

to succeed, and each CSF has a number of

objectives, which must be met in order to be

successful in that factor. So the question is, can IMS

be an enabler in terms of meeting the objectives

associated with each CSF?

IMS provides real competitive advantage to the

operator because it allows them to develop new and

innovative service offerings in a shorter timeframe

then is possible with current technologies (Ericsson

AB, 2004a). And it allows operators to do this in an

extremely cost-effective manner, because of the re-

use of the infrastructure and the common functions

and components (3G Americas, 2004; Siemens AG,

2004).

Increased revenues are possible through the

integration and interaction of services which is

possible (UTMS Forum, 2002), because IMS allows

for highly personalised bundles, which in turn gives

product differentiation.

Operators can open their networks to third party

developers while still maintaining control of their

value chain (3G Americas, 2004).

However, the biggest saving from IMS will be

when the architecture can be used to handle the

operators’ voice calls, which is currently infeasible

because of quality of service issues (McMahon,

2005). This will ultimately mean that one

architecture can be used for both voice and data

calls. Therefore the costly circuit-switched core

network can be retired and voice handling will be

done via an application server (McMahon, 2005).

While these opportunities are obviously extremely

important to the operators in a highly saturated

marketplace, do they specifically address the CSFs

of the mobile operators?

The first CSF is to increase their revenues and

subscriber base; however, in such a marketplace

increasing your revenues by adding to the subscriber

base is not a viable option. Therefore, operators

must look at new and innovative services as a way

of increasing their subscriber spend, and they must

decrease their costs and time-to-market significantly.

The introduction of the IMS architecture can

reduce the operators’ costs and time-to-market in a

number of ways. Increasing the subscriber monthly

spend, however, is not something that IMS alone can

address. What the IMS can offer in this instance is

the ability to offer new and innovative services such

as those enabled by the mobile Internet.

3 THE MOBILE INTERNET &

IMS

Keshav (2005) claims that the cell-phone has

become the dominant platform for the Internet.

However he (Keshav, 2005) acknowledges that

many cell-phone users do not actually use their

phone for Internet access yet.

Low uptake on data services can be attributed to

users’ expectations that the cell phone would

provide us with the ‘Internet in our pocket’, which,

because of the usability limitations, was never a real

possibility (Paavilainen, 2002). Therefore, the focus

should shift to new services and business concepts

(Paavilainen, 2002).

3.1 Mobile Location-based Services

and Mobile Operators

Mobile Location-Based Services (LBS) have been

heralded as providing the ultimate in convenient,

high quality service options (Barnes, 2002; Rao

., 2003).

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There are many different opinions as to the potential

and uptake of LBS in Europe, which range from $6

billion (Strategy Analytics in Paavilainen, 2002) to

$32 billion (Rao et al., 2003) in 2005. However,

despite the huge difference in opinion, according to

Paavilainen (2002) the business case for mobile LBS

is strong, as it offers opportunities to both consumers

and suppliers alike (Turban et al., 2006).

For consumers, LBS offer the ultimate in

convenience, safety, increased productivity, and

even cost savings (Paavilainen, 2002; Turban et al.,

2006). For operators it represents the ability to

differentiate themselves in the competitive

marketplace. This is of particular interest to

operators in a saturated marketplace because in order

to maintain and increase revenues, operators must

consider new value-added services which increase

customer loyalty, and which encourage customer

spending.

3.2 Integrated Information Service

Provider (iISP)

During the study the role of an Information Service

Provider or iISP was presented. This is a term to

describe a new role that can be adopted by a mobile

operator that chooses to implement the IMS

architecture, and which leverages mobile location-

based services in order to utilise the revenue

opportunities that they present to the operator.

This role is one of a highly flexible information

provider, whereby information is pulled by, or

pushed out to, the user, and is device independent,

and may or may not be location dependent. It is a

new concept, which uses the strengths and

opportunities that are inherent in the IMS

architecture, and combines them with mobile

location-based technology as a means of generating

revenue through a personalised value-added service.

It was shown that the IMS architecture offers

many potential opportunities and benefits to the

iISP, such as the use of the URI (Universal

Resources Identifier), enhanced presence

management capabilities, ability to adapt to

changing user information needs, more cost-

effective and timely delivery of new services, and

finally decreased service deployment time. Figure

1.1 shows the typical structure of the iISP.

News, Weather, Entertainment, Yel low Pages

iStatus, iLocator, iCalendar

Mobile CRM- >IMS-imp

Machine-to-Person

connectivi ty

iCommunicator

Mobile

Myhome.i e

Auct io n

Bank ing

Travel

text -to- speech/spe ech-to- text

Internet/mobile

portal

Hor iz ont al

Vert i cal

Cor por at e

Highly personali sed cont ent

URI

Wireless Mobile

Channel

Fixed Channel

Fixed/Mobile Convergence

IMS

Arc hit ect ure

IMS

Arc hit ect ure

Source: Author (2005)

Figure 1: Structure of the iISP.

4 IMS & THE CSFS FOR IRISH

OPERATORS

In Section 2.2 the CSFs of mobile operators that

compete in highly saturated marketplaces were

presented. Having considered the opportunities of

the IMS and the mobile Internet applications that it

enables, it is now important to consider the impact

they can have on the CSFs previously identified.

During the study it was shown that IMS can

make a positive contribution to all of the CSFs. In

terms of the first CSF, ‘Expand Service Offerings

and Revenues’, IMS is an enabler for the value-

added services, and also allows for the creation of

better, more personalised, bundles and services.

The second CSF is ‘Control of Subscriber and

Business Relationships’. IMS again is an enabler for

many of the tactics that help to meet the objectives

of this CSF, such as product differentiation and

richer user experience, and availability management.

In terms of expanding the enterprise customer base,

IMS was found to address many of the

communications needs of enterprises. During the

study, a functional description of an enterprise

communications tool (IMS-Imp) based on IMS was

submitted to a major Irish mobile operator for

evaluation. It was found that this tool could have a

significant impact on their corporate

communications process. In terms of controlling

business relationships, the IMS architecture is, most

importantly, operator-centric, which means that

operators can maintain control of their value chain

position.

THE IP MULTIMEDIA SUBSYSTEM (IMS) & THE MOBILE INTERNET - Opportunities for the Mobile Operator

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The third CSF is ‘Decreased Time-to-Market.’

Using current technologies, the creation and delivery

of new services is a long and costly process.

However, the horizontal nature of the IMS

architecture allows for re-use of common functions

and service enablers, thereby reducing the

development effort. Its standardised nature also

allows for faster integration and deployment.

The fourth and final CSF is ‘Decreased Costs’,

and for the mobile operator the ability of the IMS

architecture to cut costs is its biggest benefit. Firstly,

it can be used to decrease some of the internal

operational costs, by making these processes more

efficient. However, the biggest savings from IMS

will be in the future, when the architecture can be

used to handle voice calls, which means that the

operator will be able to retire their costly circuit-

switched core network.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Mobile operators are facing increasing competition

as more and more competitors enter the market, and

as their penetration rates in some countries hit

saturation point. Operators in the Irish marketplace

are faced with both of these threats, increasing

competition in the shape of MVNOs, and a

subscriber penetration rate of over 103%. These

operators have a number of CSFs that are particular

to their competitive market, and identifying them is

the first step to addressing them. IMS is a new

technology that promises a revolution in terms of

our communications capabilities, however it is

important to see if IMS could address the CSFs of

the operators.

Once the CSFs were identified, they were each

considered, to see how IMS could contribute in a

positive manner to meeting the objectives of each

particular factor. This contribution was based on the

strengths and opportunities of the IMS architecture

that were identified during the study, and from the

feedback received from the major Irish mobile

operator, in terms of the possible usage scenarios,

i.e. the IMS-Imp and the iISP.

Having considered the strengths and

opportunities inherent in the IMS, and types of

applications it enables, such as location-based m-

commerce, it was concluded that IMS could have an

impact on all of the CSFs.

It was also concluded that the CSFs identified

were not only applicable to the Irish operators, but to

any operators that compete in a similar marketplace,

i.e. one that is mature in terms of saturation levels

and that is facing increasing competition.

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http://www.ericsson.com/products/white_papers_pdf/ims_

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