Custom tailored location based services: An IMS implementation

Digital convergence is becoming increasingly important to both network operators and end users. Network operators look to Next Generation Network (NGN) solutions to meet the ever growing user demand and to the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as a catalyzer for attractive and innovative services which aim at improving user Quality of Experience (QoE). IMS, presented as the first working implementation of a Service Delivery Platform (SDP), takes great strides to ease migration to NGN as well as help the network become transparent to the end user. Location Based Services (LBS) also play an important role in QoE by supplying relevant information on the user´s whereabouts directly enhancing their day-to-day activities. The combination of LBS within IMS holds great promise for future services where service delivery mimics a network responding directly to user activities. This helps dissolve the difference between the network and the User Equipment (UE), thus increasing user adoption through a transparent network and service delivery. This paper presents two personalized LBS implemented within an IMS test bed acting as a proof of concept for providing improved QoE on an IMS infrastructure as well as demonstrating that service creation is relatively easy to achieve in IMS.