Who doesnt need IMS?
The arrival of the Internet has been a disaster for wireline telcos bottom-line revenues, in large part because of VoIP. Worse yet, all the great new services and revenue streams created by the Internetadvertising, e-commerce and morebenefited non-telcos. The portals (Yahoo!, Google, MSN) love the Internet the way it is now. Flat-rate pricing and best-effort is just fine. All they want from the telcos is dumb pipe, net-neutral access for their customers; eBay and other e-commerce companies dont need IMS (or SIP, for that matter) for continuous growth. Microsoft already has the equivalent of IMS, called Connected Service Framework. And in the time it takes you to read this article, more non-IMS hardware and software will be sold (think global GSM) than all of the IMS stuff that will be sold in year 2007 or more. Now for the more controversial questions. Here is my take on how both an IMS optimist and pessimist would answer the remaining questions.
