The GSM Association (GSMA) and China Mobile on Wednesday announced the successful completion of multi-vendor trials of interoperable Image Share services.

This service, which allows mobile users to share images with the person they are talking to whilst on a phone call, has been tested across Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola, Samsung and Comneon applications and devices on a Nokia Siemens built IMS network in China Mobile’s laboratories in Beijing.

The GSMA, which has been banging on about image and video sharing for some time, envisages that Image Share services will be a hit with both consumers and enterprises.

It sounds a bit too much like MMS to us. Remember? The messaging technology that was crippled by poor interoperability.

Nevertheless, guidelines for Image Share are based on IETF-developed protocols such as MSRP, RTP, SIP and, in particular, file transfer for SIP, as well as 3GPP specifications for IMS and combinational services – the idea being to iron out the interoperability glitches.

“Although these tests were the first of their kind, they showed that the world’s leading vendors have taken significant steps towards interoperability,” said Alex Sinclair, chief technology officer of the GSMA. “Interoperability across networks and across devices is the key to the success of any new person to person service and these tests bode well for the development of an exciting range of IMS-enabled communications services.”