SIP-based services architecture across wireless and wireline access

There are strong market and industry drivers to support a common set of end-user services ubiquitously across several wireline and wireless access technologies: UMTS/CDMA, 802.11 WLAN, Bluetooth{*} WLAN, DSL, and cable TV/packet cable. Currently, service providers must use different services architectures for providing the same end-user services on different access networks. A common Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based architecture that can support a wide range of text, voice, and video services has been developed; it is based on the 3GPP/3GPP2 IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standard. With a few minor extensions, the IMS services architecture can be used to support services across wireline and wireless access networks. (C) 2004 Lucent Technologies Inc.