GMI 2006 Marks First Global Test of the IMS Service Framework

GMI 2006, a large-scale real network trial of multivendor interoperability of the IMS service framework, is scheduled for Oct 16-27.

"Let me give you some idea of the scale of what the MSF will deliver to the industry," said Roger Ward with the office of the CTO at British Telecom plc. and president of the MultiService Forum. "We began this year with a major commitment from five of the world's top carriers – BT, KT, NTT, Verizon and Vodafone – and the world-class test facility of the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab, to work with the MSF and host this event in world-class networked test facilities spanning three continents. As a result, GMI 2006 will be a massive global interoperability event with 26 MSF member companies currently contracted to commit their systems to proving out practical Implementation Agreements developed collaboratively over the last 15 months by MSF members."

GMI 2006 will test multivendor interoperability to achieve fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), supporting the IMS service framework. The event will validate MSF Release 3 Implementation Agreements covering: roaming services across multiple network types; QoS (Session Border Gateway and Bandwidth Manager); IP carrier interconnect/interworking; security interoperability; third-party applications and service brokering; open media GW control interface relevant to 3GPP BICN architecture; and IPv4/6 interworking.

IMS has moved beyond the stage of speculative hype, and is now grounded in its development stage, with all the challenges that entails, Ward said.

GMI 2006, with its focus on key interoperability aspects of an NGN/IMS implementation, is the result of thousands of hours of collaboration by MSF members to deliver the detail to support 17 MSF Release 3 Implementation Agreements and more than 1,000 pages of supporting test plans. As for the event itself this October, it will involve hundreds of development and test engineers performing round-the-clock test activity.

Aside from the service providers, the participating members to date include: Acme Packet, Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Empirix, Ericsson, ETRI, Huawei Technologies, IP Unity, Leapstone Systems, Lucent Technologies, MetaSwitch, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, NCS, NEC, Newport Networks, NexTone Communications, Nortel Networks, Operax, Samsung, Siemens, Softfront, Sonus Networks, Spirent Communications, Starent Networks, Tekelec and ZTE Corporation.

The MultiService Forum www.msforum.org

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