Ajit Joakar is asking on his blog Where are the IMS applications?

IMS brings the benefits of IP to the signalling (i.e. control) plane for P2P services. It makes developing new P2P services easier and more cost effective than trying to do so with legacy platforms. SDPs can provide a useful bridge between IMS and legacy systems, but I don’t think they otherwise add any value.

It would be far easier to rollout new network services with an all IMS network, especially if it were used to control voice calls (which it won’t be for some time, because they will remain circuit-switched).

One example is that making a call to a number could be used to trigger any service related to the number being dialled. This could be used to trigger contextual advertising and so on.

Another example is that it would be easy to offer users a service to record phone conversations and then access them per number in future.

Visual voicemail, like the iPhone has, would be easier to develop using IMS.

Making calls directly into a voicemail box would be easier to develop using IMS.

This is all because triggering events from IMS (i.e. SIP) is incredibly easy and then developing an app using something like SIP servlets is a no-brainer. I feel confident that I could develop all the above apps in my lunchbreak and, using the right platform (e.g. Opencloud), they would be scalable telco-grade apps. Whereas, if you were to ask me to do the same via today’s SS7 networks etc, I would rather go spend all that time, money and effort to create a virtual world where we can all live and pretend that Telco legacy doesn’t exist

The problem is that any of the above services - and there are tons more with voice alone - don’t have a proven business model that supports migration to IMS just to gain these benefits.

Furthermore, the nature of the telco world - even with IMS - is such that a guy in his garage with a SIP servlet SDK isn’t going to bother to develop an app. Hence, the people who should really be answering the question ‘where are all the IMS apps’ - i.e. massive global community of clever developers - aren’t in the picture. They’re not even interested. A few IMS hopefuls are battling away wasting tons of cash to develop apps that don’t stand a chance of hitting critical mass, especially with the lack of IMS handsets! Good luck to them.

Why can’t developer’s at least do some of this stuff? I think that they could - and would - if operators were to at least open up some of their network to individuals to do whatever the hell they like with their telco account on a personal level as opposed to a service level. I posted this before about giving developer’s their own limited API to play around with and make mash-ups. Many developers are motivated by solving problems, not necessarily offering services. It’s really quite simple. If we never give developers access to the network, they aren’t going to use it. Hence, no innovation. Hence, no apps. Duh!

Technorati Tags: IMS, P2P, contextual advertising, voicemail, iPhone, SIP, SIP servlet

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