An Unparalleled Opportunity

Following a successful inaugural competition last year, Nokia Siemens Networks, AT&T, and Georgia Tech continue their partnership to sponsor a second IMS research competition coinciding with the Spring 2008 semester.

This research competition represents an unparalleled opportunity for Georgia Tech students to get hands on experience developing viable business plans and prototypes on the next generation, standards based, telecommunications platform. The competition will have students form interdisciplinary teams made up of tomorrow's leaders in Communications Marketing and Business Development, Mobile and Converged Application Design and Interaction, and Mobile and Converged Application and Handset Development.

IMS, based on SIP, is an access technology neutral service delivery platform. The platform has native support for identity, mobility, presence, location, and collaboration primitives.

The IMS lab used for the competition will feature an updated IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) platform featuring the NSN IMS Core upgraded to release 6, and NSN's MPM upgraded to release 3 (for Presence and Group list Management)". The lab also contains resources for video streaming, advanced voice features, server and handset development, location based services, and web 2.0 platforms for campus enterprise email, calendar, contacts and course management. In addition the AT&T network and Georgia Tech's campus wide WiFi network (LAWN) have been configured to enable access to the IMS platform for participating students and researchers.

The IMS lab will enable the development of new wireless and wired telecommunications services; and provides a foundation to encourage and support research beyond the research competition. In addition, courses and talks offered throughout the competition will include participation by business and marketing professionals from the telecommunications industry.