Keith Higgins explains IMS: You don't know what IMS is yet, if you're like most people, but you will soon, with a commitment from Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless to migrate to the fixed-mobile convergence technology, and interest worldwide as well. IP Multimedia Subsystem is a way to develop one platform for delivering services like voice, video, games, and music for mobile devices and fixed devices over many kinds of pipes--wireless, fiber, what have you. Stoke is developing a universal translator to help operators add IMS services, and Keith Higgins talks about what IMS is, what it can deliver, and how we'll move to an era of getting the same kind of thing everywhere, mediated by the device rather than the connection.
Another aspect of IMS is that the it uses SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), a now-old and well-used standard, for connecting calls and sessions. This is interesting because it shows the adoption of a widespread relatively open standard widely used in VoIP by the major telcos. Of course, they can wall off SIP as much as they want, but it's a nice big chink in the walled garden's fence.