3:35 PM -- In the world of stand-alone session border controllers (SBCs), Acme Packet Inc. (Nasdaq: APKT) is indisputably at the top of the pile -- the specialist everyone needs to beat to win the deals. (See Acme Racket, Acme Edges Into the Enterprise, and Acme Packet Reports Q1.)

The vendor has more than 670 customers, among which are 89 of the top 100 carriers in the world. And it added to its deployments today with the announcement of two new deals in Europe, one each in Sweden and Germany. (See Acme Wins Euro SBC Deals.)

Notable in today's two customer announcements was the focus on how Acme's gear is part of a broader migration toward an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) set-up by both carrier customers.

IMS has been talked about for years, and even dismissed by some, but many carrier CTOs have always seen it as, at the very least, the foundation of a converged service management platform at some point in the future. (See What's Up With IMS?)

And there are signs that certain IMS elements are being deployed now with a view to being part of a broader, unified service delivery strategy down the line. (See IMS in the Spotlight, Swisscom Trials IMS, TWC Uses NSN for IMS, and Belgacom Uses BroadSoft.)

The main disparity in the IMS sector (as with any other) is the timeline that vendors talk about in terms of deployments and the actual plans of the carriers -– that gap is usually anything between three and seven years.

News of the European contract wins didn't help Acme's share price at all today, though -– its stock is down $0.64, a full 6 percent, to $10.02 today.

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading