It’s all about the network

While the big news out of this year’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Span, was Verizon Wireless’ choice of LTE vendors – Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson, among others – its IMS news is just as interesting. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Verizon Wireless is going to deploy IMS to counteract the hype from application storefronts and also bring features to its wired networks.
It’s no surprise that Verizon Wireless chose Alcatel-Lucent as its infrastructure supplier for LTE. The companies have always worked well together; they’re even neighbors. Last month’s announcement also underscores Alcatel-Lucent’s efforts to remake itself as not just an infrastructure supplier, but an application platform enabler.
I met recently with Alcatel-Lucent’s Robert Vrij, who has perhaps the best title in wireless: president of the Americas. (Technically, that’s better than Obama’s title.) Anyway, Vrig said A-L’s position “smack in the middle of the data path” would enable it to aid Verizon Wireless to match content with consumer. “Where we sit in the network is our advantage.”
And I suspect Verizon Wireless plans to use A-L’s app enablement platform to its advantage. With handset manufacturers and operating system designers opening application storefronts, the carrier connection to the subscriber could be relegated to the back seat, which must be a little disconcerting to wireless operators. Have iPhone subscribers really connected with AT&T Mobility or are they loyal to Apple and iTunes?
A carrier deploying IMS in the network means the applications can work across handsets and operating systems, Vrij said. The intelligence is housed in the network – the network controlled by the carrier.
And if the carrier also happens to have other broadband customers, albeit wired, why not offer those same solutions available on the wireless network to the wired counterpart. Sometimes I may want a coupon delivered to my phone, but I wouldn’t mind it sent to my e-mail address as well.
In a way this is a no-brainer: For Verizon Wireless, it turns out it is the network, after all.