Patent ID: 7940748

Claim:
A method of operating an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network to support provision of web services, the method comprising: receiving a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) message from a device, the SIP message comprising an embedded web service request that requests a web service; protocol translating the received SIP message to generate a non-IMS message including the web service request; transmitting the non-IMS message to a web service provider; and transmitting the requested web service corresponding to the non-IMS message from the web service provider to the device; wherein receiving the SIP message comprising the embedded web service request from the device comprises receiving the SIP message at a Proxy Call Session Control Function (P-CSCF); wherein protocol translating the received SIP message to generate the non-IMS message including the web service request is preceded by forwarding the received SIP message from the P-CSCF to a protocol translation SIP application server (AS); wherein protocol translating the received SIP message to generate the non-IMS message including the web service request comprises generating the non-IMS message from the forwarded SIP message at the protocol translation SIP AS; and wherein transmitting the non-IMS message to the web service provider comprises transmitting the non-IMS message from the protocol translation SIP AS to the web service provider.