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Motorola Inc.'s Global Telecom Solutions Sector (GTSS) today announced the latest enhancement to its core networking portfolio with the introduction of the Motorola IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). The Motorola IMS complements the previously announced Motorola SoftSwitch (MSS) and Push-To-Talk over Cellular (PoC) core product initiatives and continues the momentum towards developing fully converged core networks for wireless operators that will enable synchronized voice, data, and multimedia applications. The Motorola IMS is planned to be available for select customer trials by mid-year.

"Motorola's IMS platform is a central part of our standards based approach to core network evolution," said Murali Aravamudan, vice president and general manager, Winphoria Division of Motorola's GTSS. "We are following the IMS standard, and have leveraged the inherent potential for innovation in the application layer with our SoftSwitch technology to create a carrier-grade, highly scalable platform that will enable operators to offer valued added services."

The Motorola IMS is based on Motorola's SoftSwitch platform that currently is in service and in trials around the world. In addition to supporting today's 2G and 3G networks, the Motorola SoftSwitch serves as a starting point for seamless evolution into the future IMS based packet network core. Motorola's IMS solution enables converged voice, data and video applications through standards-based interfaces.

Motorola has been an active participant with the 3GPP in the development and refinement of the IMS standard. The Motorola IMS is compliant with 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards for IP Multimedia Subsystems, and supports a variety of 2.5G and 3G wireless access networks, including GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, and CDMA, as well as emerging systems such as IEEE 802.11 WiFi, wireline and enterprise networks. It takes advantage of the network independence of IP to create core applications that are agnostic to radio access technologies and that can seamlessly bring new services and applications to wireless networks.

IMS applications will include converged voice services across wireless, enterprise and WiFi networks, as well as value added services such as PoC, multimedia messaging, instant messaging and chat, video conferencing, and multimedia group calling. While some multimedia applications are available in one form or another today, the IMS architecture allows a single application to work across all IP enabled wireless access networks, instead of each one having to be customized to the underlying radio access technology and thereby having limited applicability. Multimedia applications built on the IMS architecture are portable, traveling with enabled devices as subscribers roam across country or around the world.