AT&T's Video Sharing, in an IMS-based walled garden

After writing about AT&T's video sharing service that includes Samsung handsets with NMS software inside, I got two private emails, both from people wanting to use this service to stream video to websites.  This is not surprising.  It's a great idea.  NMS demonstrated a service like this at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona last February and got a lot of interest.  The problem is, you either need the operator's cooperation or you need some serious kludgery.

Note:  the following analysis is a guess on my part.  I could speak with some of our developers and perhaps get more specific detail, but then I might risk violating some non-disclosure agreement.  So what follows describes the way IMS-based video sharing is supposed to work.  AT&T boasts their Video Sharing is "Powered by New-Generation IMS Network Technology."

IMS-based Video Sharing is a provisioned service which means, when you sign up, your Home Subscriber Service (HSS) entry is updated to reflect the fact you have the service and software on your handset is enabled.  If you haven't signed up for the service, you don't even see the relevant icons on you phone.  Then when you go to make a call, there is a database dip in the HSS to verify that you, and the party you are trying to call, both have video sharing service.  This guarantees the connection will work, or it produces a clear error message if the connection won't work.  But this also means, you can't connect to an arbitrary SIP address.

Too bad!, as our Video Access developers platform would otherwise allow you to terminate a call and route the video to a website or other video destination.  But for now, that's not to be.  The AT&T service description is quite clear, video sharing only works when both parties have video sharing enabled handsets and both are on AT&T's 3G network.

Comments

[Alex]

How typical is that?