IMS Experience Centre - A Real-life Test Network for IMS services

3GPP standardized IP multimedia subsystem is yet to witness large-scale commercial deployment. This is a surprising fact, considering the advantages offered by the IMS technology, such as open standards architecture, rapid service deployment features, reduction in operational expenses amongst the others. In order to identify the IMS deployment hurdles as well as to measure the realistic performance of the IMS technology and the existing IMS services, there is a need for a real-life test network. On one hand, network testing grounds are traditionally restricted to laboratories where the setup is highly controlled and isolated from real-life scenarios, on the other hand testing on commercial networks is typically forbidden at the risk of disrupting the live services. Thus, majority of the existing communication test-beds lack the scale, flexibility and the infrastructure to represent and emulate a true next-generation networking environment. This paper presents a test network that is connected to a live mobile operator network that is designed to emulate a ldquoreal-liferdquo next-generation operator network that not only provisions next generation IMS-based multimedia services, but also presents a service creation environment enabling new and innovative services. This test network is termed as the ldquoIMS Experience Centrerdquo reflecting the fact that it enables real-life experience of IMS technology and services. This is achieved by integrating the currently existing heterogeneous access technologies with a 3GPP standards based IMS core network and an adequate service creation layer with service enablers and highly abstracted application development environments.