Mobilkom Austria Group will launch SIP-enabled services in three of it operators in the coming months using presence servers and XDM (XML Document Management) servers from Colibria.
Deploying the SIP and XDM servers within mobilkom¹s IMS-based services environment will mean services can be presence-enabled and users will be able to share information such as profile details, status, availability and preferred methods of contact.
Matt Hooper, vp marketing at Colibria, said the deployment would mean mobilkom would be able to develop truly converged services that are subscriber centric, rather than network or device centric.
A1, VIPnet and Mobitel will all equip their networks with the technology as part of a group deal, with the first service to be enabled being A1's VoIP service. Hooper said that on the device side the operator could either deploy a softphone or a SIP based client on the device, and said that was "still in the mix".
"What we¹re talking about here is the initial stages to true convergence, with presence adding richness to the ability of people to connect according to their profile and in the appropriate form of contact, depending on their location, the device they are on and so on," Hooper said.
Although presence has been talked about for some time, Hooper said operators are really now seeing it as a strategic tool that offers them differentiation and service innovation, especially across fixed and mobile assets.
"It's really about moving the whole evolution of operator services to the next level," he said. "For mobile operators as a whole this is a fantastic way of adding differentiation they have to their assets, merging and running a very unified subscriber-centric environment."
Although mobilkom has an IMS environment, Hooper added that the Enrich platform can also work in a non-IMS SIP environment. The use of the XDM server to enable sharing of service related data across services, for example, unified contact list and presence information, is also of note, Hooper said.
"The XDM, in terms of its ability to enable address book level, dynamic sharing of data, could be as important in the network as the HLR/HSS," Hooper added.
This is Colibria¹s first announced deployment of its Enrich platform, Hooper said, although the vendor has "a whole number of projects ongoing" he said.