The IMS: IP Multimedia Concepts And Services, Second Edition

4.3. Presence contributing to business

Presence can contribute to existing businesses and create a business of its own. There will be basic presence user services as well as new presence-enabled services. Operators and other service providers have a major role in mass adoption of presence services. The basic mobile presence service can be part of the operator's service portfolio, since other services – i.e., the new presence services – can use the basic service. The mobile domain, now reaching almost a billion subscribers worldwide, is a profitable platform for new consumer services.

Offering a basic presence service can give a competitive advantage for an operator over other operators who are not offering it: by binding their presence information to a particular operator's services, customers have high-value services that other operators may not be able to offer without that information. Presence generates new traffic for existing services like instant messaging. Presence also minimizes incomplete calls or calls being rejected due to the called party being busy.

Operators also need to carefully consider the pricing of presence allowing people to make an easy decision about adopting the presence service, without having to think for too long about the cost/benefit.