Infonetics Research recently analyzed trends in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) market and found that LTE was the top driver for IMS deployments.
“For the first time ever, LTE is the top driver for IMS deployments in our annual IMS service provider survey,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. “But while LTE may be the No. 1 driver, the reality is the majority of services running over IMS today are fixed-line VoIP. None of our survey respondents has yet deployed voice over LTE (VoLTE).
“Ultimately, the longer-term inevitability of an all-IP mobile network is leading operators to IMS for other services first, even if VoLTE services are farther down the road.”
Highlights from the survey included:
- IMS networks continue to be deployed by fixed-line operators, mobile operators and cable operators; 71 percent of Infonetics’ survey respondents have already deployed IMS, and the rest are in the process of deploying IMS (a requirement for participating in the survey).
- Fixed-line VoIP service is the mainstay of IMS deployments, with 76 percent of respondents running residential voice over broadband, SIP trunking or hosted business VoIP over IMS today, growing to 100 percent by 2014.
- Mobile services are growing in importance: By 2014, 71 percent of respondent operators plan to offer RCS/e, more than half plan to offer VoLTE, and more or less a third will offer VoIP over 3G and mobile messaging.
- Ericsson continued to be the leading IMS vendor in terms of equipment installed by respondent operators.
- Huawei was a real standout in this year’s survey, growing its installed base every year among survey respondents and topping the vendor leadership list for pricing, total cost of ownership, product roadmap, financial stability and reliability.
Infonetics’ IMS survey was based on interviews with purchase decision-makers at 21 incumbent, mobile, competitive and cable operators from around the world with IMS core equipment in their networks.