Topic:
Convergence and Mobility Innovation: Engaging students in the new world of communications

Abstract:
The world of telecommunications is undergoing a rapid and dramatic change in the fundamentals of how applications are designed, developed and delivered. For many years, new telecom applications were developed using closed and specialized architectures that required multi-year efforts and resulted in stovepipes that could not be further leveraged. Today, the growth of Internet services and the development of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) are helping to change this. For the last several years, we have been using IMS as a vehicle for bringing the telecommunications world back into the curriculum for students at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Through new courses and a student research competition we have challenged students in both engineering and business disciplines to bring their best ideas for new mobile applications to fruition using the IMS architecture. This talk will present our experiences, lessons learned, and plans for continuing this exciting effort.