The IMS Forum has finished up round two of its series of plugfests, testing basic services such as short message service, or SMS, multimedia message service, voicemail and video sharing over the equipment of 18 forum members. Though the forum is not releasing specific results of individual members’ performance, Michael Khalilian, the forum’s chairman and president, said that the plugfest was enough of a success that it is accelerating its testing and interoperability timeline.

The IMS Forum’s third plugfest is now scheduled for October, which will add more complex applications such as multimedia, IPTV and video conferencing to the test list. In addition, Plugfest III may result in the first certified gear to emerge from the forum, Khalilian said. The forum takes a unique approach to the certification process. It doesn’t certify individual network components per se but rather certifies components interoperability over particular applications. So each individual vendor’s gear will be certified separately for multimedia, SMS, video conferencing, etc. Khalilian said that IMS Forum is targeting a cycle of three to four plugfests to iron out any kinks in running a particular application, meaning that the initial applications tested from Plugfest I, such as basic voice over IP and presence, could produce certified equipment by the next plugfest in October.