IMS or OTT?

There are two ways going to multimedia service today: IMS or OTT.

IMS is overall solution more for operator, to merge voice text, phone, video on same network; OTT is just pure multimedia service over IP layer providing by operator.

The benefit of IMS for operator is more easy to control and bill service, also QoS and security consideration; OTT is prefer option for network service provider like skype, and latest wechat wave in China.

There is rumor for wechat around world - Tencent will start charge for wechat, free of wechat will be gone soon, but Ma from Tencent declined this news. Wechat became 0.3 bn network in just one year, the trend as 4th operator in mainland China since at least 20% long distance business moved from traditional service to wechat, it will be more in the near future. The top 3 operators for sure would like to make money from wechat but it is not easy to simply charge or shutdown wechat since free if sell point for wechat. So far both of operators and Tincent seems agreed that touch issue for wechat is a technical difficult - heartbeat signal used 60% signal of network, but only bringing back 10% data traffic, they are looking for sharing technology to reduce signal usage. Then in the next stage for sure they will negotiate shares if Tincent start to make money from wechat in some way.

There is similar story for skype in Untied State, Verizon + skype service, it is free from skype to skype, it will use Verizon voice plan when call from skype to US numbers, it is pure skype credit when call skype to international number, it sounds like win-win solution.

It is long way to go for operator or network service being IMS or OTT, let's see.