IP Multimedia Service Control is an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). IMS is a standards-based architectural framework for delivering multimedia communications services such as voice, video and text messaging over IP networks.
Within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the thrust of the session initiation protocol (SIP)-based Internet protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS) is envisaged to allow a swift progression towards the provision of multimedia applications for increasingly demanding end users. The paradigm of service programmability using open network application programming interfaces (APIs), with open service access (OSA) as its main exponent, is helping to drive this development together with the use of SIP. The focal point of this paper will be the multimedia services architecture in the IMS by providing details of the interaction of the IMS and the application servers in the form of the OSA gateway and the SIP application server.