Telstra CTO: Unlike IMS, NFV Is Inevitable

The introduction of network functions virtualization (NFV) into telco operations is like "the tide rolling in -- that's going to happen," according to Hugh Bradlow, the CTO at Telstra, who is examining all sorts of technology innovations and figuring out how they will be deployed and adopted by telcos and users.

The Telstra Corp. Ltd. (ASX: TLS; NZK: TLS) technologist talked to Light Reading during the recent Broadband World Forum event in Amsterdam about his role at the Australian operator and his views on certain technology developments: You can see what he had to say in this Prime Reading feature -- Telstra CTO Explores the Tech Horizon.

I also talked with Bradlow about the previous time we sat down for a chat, which was in London some years ago, when IMS was being touted as the next big architectural shift for telcos. At the time, though, Bradlow was somewhat dismissive of the hype around IMS and, he believes, the jury is still out on the importance of the IP Multimedia Subsystem.

"IMS is neither fish nor fowl. There are some applications that need IMS but there are others that haven't taken off. We continue to wrestle with it but it's not taking over," notes the Telstra CTO, who turned to 4G voice services as an example of the uncertainty around the adoption of certain IMS capabilities.

Telstra, he notes, uses circuit-switched fallback (CSFB) to deliver voice services to 4G LTE customers, "and that works well. So is there a pressing need for [IMS-based] VoLTE? Not currently. Will there be a pressing need for VoLTE eventually? Probably. It's not an industry journey that's over yet." (See Telstra Extends 4G Coverage.)

— Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading