In June 2024, GSMA Terminal Steering Group (TSG) held its 56th meeting in Kunming, China, and formally approved TS.66 IMS Data Channel API Specification V1.0, a Permanent Reference Document(PRD) developed by the IMSDCAS project. The PRD was subsequently released on July 9, 2024.
In 2023, GSMA launched NG.134 IMS Data Channel, establishing a standards foundation for operators to deploy New Calling networks. Building on this foundation, GSMA released TS.66 this year, enabling numerous terminal and application developers to create innovative New Calling applications. The release of TS.66 marks a crucial milestone in the unification of the global New Calling application ecosystem and is a significant step towards the success of New Calling.
As the core of New Calling, IMS Data Channel enables operators to offer a diverse range of calling applications, enhance user engagement throughout the entire call lifecycle, and facilitate real-time sharing, marking, and transferring of files, revolutionizing the user experience and communication efficiency. To enhance terminal support for IMS Data Channel and facilitate seamless interoperability between different operator networks, TS.66 leverages WebRTC API 1.0 as a foundation and defines terminal APIs tailored to IMS Data Channel, encompassing the terminal-supported logical architecture and the JavaScript APIs exposed by terminals to IMS Data Channel applications. TS.66 establishes a unified standards foundation for the global New Calling application ecosystem, and is mandatory for the development of terminals and applications supporting IMS Data Channel, requiring terminal vendors and application developers to adhere to it.
In addition, at its 56th meeting, GSMA TSG approved the next-phase work plan of the IMSDCAS working group, which aims to accelerate the adoption of open-source SDKs, enabling global terminal and chip vendors to directly integrate IMS Data Channel capabilities into their products as specified in TS.66, paving the way for terminals to natively support IMS Data Channel.
To download GSMA TS.66 IMS Data Channel API Specification, visit the following website:
https://www.gsma.com/get-involved/working-groups/gsma_resources/ts-66-v1-0-ims-data-channel-api-specification