Released: Thursday, September 15, 2016
Not only do communications service providers have to compete with each other, they also must compete with over-the-top (OTT) players, who are targeting both next-generation data and traditional voice and messaging services using software platforms that are much more flexible than traditional telecommunications networks. This reality is forcing network operators to transform their businesses to become platform providers themselves.
To do this they are virtualizing their network and service platforms using web-scale infrastructure, and those with mobile businesses are also looking at how they can expand their 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks to support next-generation services and migrate traditional voice and messaging services off legacy 2G and 3G platforms. Since LTE has an all-IP (Internet Protocol) core network, Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and other real-time services such as the Rich Communications Suite (RCS) depend on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) for management and control.
This report looks at:
- How IMS got its start and its role for 4G LTE
- How services like VoLTE and RCS use IMS and vIMS
- How OTT providers threaten traditional voice and messaging services
- Why assuring quality of service is necessary
- Why ETSI MANO isn’t enough for end-to-end management
- How closed control loops, policy and analytics can be used to automate service assurance end to end
- How TM Forum can help with service assurance for vIMS and other virtualized functions
