IMS and MIB requirements

In this article:

   http://www.billingworld.com/archive-detail.cfm?archiveId=7705

I read:

   Stories abound of equipment manufacturers struggling to deliver not
   only systems that support IMS, but also solid Management Information
   Base (MIB) databases that make their gear manageable. A source inside
   BellSouth who has spent the past several months working on the LEC's
   VoIP architecture says that major equipment manufacturer has lost an
   opportunity to supply application servers based on the lack of
   reasonable MIBs. If this is the type of basic problem holding up
   IMS development, it's clear that most IMS gear is simply not ready
   to come out of the oven yet. "We're still seeing 24-month [estimates]
   before we see widespread deployment of standard systems," says
   Syndesis' Nicholson. 

which kind of surprises me, namely that the IMS infrastructure seems
in need of MIB modules.

Does anyone have any insights/comments/other-data-points?

Bert