Enabling Agile Telecom with Cloud-Native IMS

Over the last few years, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have been very vocal in announcing their rollouts of 5G data services. On the subject of 5G voice services, however, they’ve been largely silent because, frankly, there hasn’t been much to say. 5G network transformation has focused on data, since faster data (and not faster voice) is what customers expected from 5G. But customers also expect to be able to make voice calls on their 5G phones when they roam or travel. Surprisingly, that’s not always a sure thing. That’s because many MNOs have not migrated off their 2G/3G voice network infrastructure. That legacy infrastructure isn’t compatible with modern 4G/5G voice services. So, when customers roam, they can find themselves disconnected…

As more MNOs turn down their legacy 2G/3G circuit-switched voice networks to reduce costs and re-allocate radio spectrum, the issue becomes more acute for users that roam in or out of a legacy network. MNOs that have not moved to Voice over LTE (VoLTE) or Voice over New Radio (VoNR) services for their 4G/5G networks, need to move quickly to avoid customer churn. Adopting an IMS-based voice network brings a host of benefits with it. IMS is reliable and it delivers high-quality voice. It is also very secure. It supports emergency services such as first-responder voice services and lawful intercept. And, today, it can be deployed completely in the cloud (public or private), making it much easier, faster, and cheaper to implement IMS than in the past.

How Does Cloud-Native IMS Impact Network Performance and Quality?

That said, not all IMS cloud implementations are the same. Only a cloud-native IMS solution can truly take advantage of all the cloud has to offer. (If you’re not familiar with what differentiates a cloud-native solution, read our Cloud-Native vs Cloud-Washing blog. A cloud-native IMS solution runs on containers managed by Kubernetes, which provides a host of benefits. For example, a cloud-native IMS solution scales more efficiently because MNOs can scale compute/storage resources, load balancing, stateless microservices, etc. and use automation tools to do it dynamically as workloads change. Without containers and Kubernetes, you still end up dimensioning your IMS solution for the busiest times of the year—e.g., Mother’s Day, when call volumes surge —while overprovisioning for the rest of the year. And because Kubernetes is an accepted standard, you can deploy a cloud-native IMS solution on any cloud, whether public or private.

One of the “hidden” benefits of a cloud-native IMS solution is its ability to support multitenancy. This is important, especially for tier two and tier three operators, because building and maintaining your own IMS solution can be a sizable investment. Multitenancy allows operators and service providers to offer IMS as a Service at a much lower cost for networks that have thousands (rather than millions) of subscribers.

Cloud-Native IMS Solution Brief

IMS as a Service and 5G interconnect for voice services are the biggest opportunities for IMS, but they are not the only ones. Enterprises that are using 4G or 5G for fixed wireless access will need to backhaul their mobile voice services to an IMS core. And, in an interesting twist, Over-The-Top (OTT) application providers, who often compete against MNOs, have shown an interest in using IMS to enhance their own voice services. Looking ahead, the growing interest in satellite-based communications could present yet another use case for IMS.

So, now that we’ve got you thinking about IMS (again), why should you think about Ribbon as your IMS solution partner? Let’s return to that whole cloud-native thing. We developed a completely new IMS solution based entirely on a cloud-native, microservices-based, architecture, so it’s built for the needs of today’s MNOs, whether they need to support interconnect for their partners or want to create a multitenancy model to resell services. Ribbon’s IMS solution is also uniquely flexible; it can be deployed in a VoLTE configuration or 5G VoNR (and migrates seamlessly from 4G to 5G) and even runs on VMs as a containerized solution in case you’re not ready to migrate off a virtualized environment just yet. Given that it’s taken the industry so long to finally implement IMS and the fact that cloud networks are the industry’s future, doing it once and doing it right (i.e., cloud-native) just makes sense.

Of course, Ribbon brings more than a great IMS solution to the table, such as our industry-leading Session Border Controllers (SBCs), analytics, and test automation solutions. So, if you’re looking for a way to cut the cord on legacy equipment and streamline your path to 4G VoLTE and beyond, it’s time to bring IMS back into the conversation.