The company now has a plan to introduce a new IP Multimedia System (IMS) to enhance mobile-users' experience of rich multimedia applications over the network.

From emphasising two business areas - telecommunications infrastructure and networking systems - the 100-year-old company, which provides telecommunications systems and services to mobile and fixed-network telephone operators, has set up a new business unit called multimedia services.

"Previously we specialised in helping operators to lay down network infrastructure and manage infrastructure well. Now we're helping them to increase revenues by providing enriched communication services," said Hans Karlasson, president and country manager of Ericsson (Thailand).

He said that under this new strategy, the company would provide a new IP Multimedia System, to enable content and service providers to develop new kinds of rich multimedia services. The system converges network technology from a single-play service network into a multimedia service network, allowing seamless media to be delivered over any device and be access independent.

With this, users will experience multimedia services including video telephony, mobile television, IP-based multimedia telephony, IPTV, and multimedia sharing applications.

"If IMS is put in place, service operators will be able to develop new multimedia sharing services to allow users, for example, to share live video, snapshots, pictures, video clips, and so on over the network," he said.

For operators, he added, the new technology would offer more opportunities to increase revenue, not only attracting new subscribers but also reducing churn. As the introduction of IMS will increase service value per average user and help operators increase customer satisfaction, Karlasson believed that IMS would become the preferred architecture for fixed and mobile operators' multimedia businesses as it offered an effective way for operators to make maximum use of horizontal network architecture.

In addition, the new multimedia services are able to enhance a greater variety of businesses such as home surveillance, call centres, and healthcare services.

"These kinds of services will become widespread in a couple of years," he predicted.

The firm is working with several operators to help them develop new technology. Nineteen contracts for IMS have been signed so far around the world with another 40 for the testing process. Recently Ericsson completed an interactive mobile TV trail with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, to double the average time viewers watch mobile shows which are run in parallel with the terrestrial broadcasts. The company hopes these kinds of enriched multimedia services will be available in Thailand in the not-too-distant future.

The company said that over 1,000 networks in 140 countries have utilised Ericsson network equipment. Around 40 per cent of all mobile calls are made through Ericsson systems.