iLocus reports that there is a surge within the service providers to provide NGN service. People who follow my blog know that I am a big fan of IMS and who honestly believe that it is not just another marketing gimmick.
At the same time, I have come to believe that Indian service providers are not ready to deploy it for the following reasons. Before I get to the reasons, I had a chance to meet up with some very senior technical folks in a major Telco last week and they told me that they were Beta testing the NGN architecture and was asking how the contact center solution we were going to provide fit in that scheme of things. I was very surprised that atleast one Telco was talking this language and I told them so. The guys smiled wryly that they are thrilled about the technical possibilities but they still don’t have the business approval to go to production on full swing.
When I questioned him further on why they face resistance, the answer was simple. The Telcos in India operate on revenue sharing model and believe it or not, ZTE/Huawei are the hottest selling vendors in India. Though they claim to have a NGN play, they are not half as ready as Ericsson or even for that matter Alcatel. These guys cannot afford Ericsson and for what they get, they cannot implement a pure play IMS world.
Now if we are talking just about SIP Trunking ( well VoIP trunking is SIP trunking in this new world. H323 is there but the number are dwindling), then the report holds a lot of merit.
Gokul Blog -- A conversation on VoIP, IMS, Cisco and Just about Anything 