A recent study by Infonetics Research entitled Service Provider Plans for Next Gen Voice & IMS finds that nearly 80 percent of service providers are planning to offer fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services by April of 2008.

The top two benefits of offering FMC services, according to the providers, are increasing the average revenue per user (ARPU) and keeping traffic within the network.

Next-generation IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture, though, isn't experiencing the same kind of uptake. "Despite the fact that 71% of the service providers we interviewed for a similar study last year expected to use IMS architecture in 2007, we cautioned that providers likely were being optimistic with their uptake plans," says Infonetics analyst Stéphane Téral. " With this year's study, we now have concrete evidence of IMS adoption shifting out: just over a quarter are using IMS in 2007 and less than half plan to do so in 2008."

More here from VNUnet ... more here from TMCnet ... and the press release is here.