A TMN eBOOK

A TMN eBOOK IN ASSOCIATION WITH RADISYS

VoLTE // MOVING FROM

DELAY TO DEPLOY
A TMN publication in association with Radisys

Sponsors

INTRODUCTION

Hi!
Why have more operators not
deployed VoLTE, or made public
their intention to do so?
Ray Adensamer: Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Radisys

This eBook, the latest in our series

produced in association with media
partner The Mobile Network, takes a
head-on look at this issue. At Radisys,
our take on this is simply this - now is
the time to deploy the IMS elements
that would support a full VoLTE
implementation, and it neednt be a
costly or difficult process.
We dont seek to deny that there has
been a delay to the uptake of IMS
deployments or downplay operator
concerns about the cost or complexity
of IMS. Indeed, this paper looks at the
reasons for the delay in IMS and VoLTE
rollouts, and then seeks to handle those
objections and outline the benefits that
VoLTE can bring to a mobile operator.

We also outline the functions

and capabilities of the MRF - a
key IMS element in a VoLTE
deployment - explaining how
the MRF can help operators
maximise value from VoLTE.
Allied to this, our infographic looks at
the development of VoLTE, adoption
in the market, and the latest data on
deployments.
Please enjoy this VoLTE eBook.

The time to delay is over,

the time to deploy is now.

VoLTE

A TMN EBOOK: VOLTE - MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

MOVING FROM
DELAY TO DEPLOY

Slow progress in the

deployment of VoLTE
has many in the industry
confused, or convinced
the technology will not
ever be widely deployed.
Youd think VoLTE would be a simple tick
for operators. As soon as operators have
the spectrum available and free, they are
going to roll out LTE. The reasons for that
are now clear. LTE gives operators greater
operational and spectral efficiency, it gives
their users a far greater mobile broadband
experience, leading to a significant rise in
data usage. In many cases this translates
to the ability to sell more data packages at
premium prices.
So where there are hundreds of LTE
networks live, youd also think that there
would be a similar rush to support
operators key revenue-generating services
- voice and messaging - across those LTE
networks. And yet there are not. The Global
mobile Suppliers Association says that of
the 268 live LTE networks in 100 countries,
just a handful have so far deployed VoLTE.
Voice and messaging have undoubtedly
been diminishing revenue lines for some
operators in mature markets, but those
revenues still make up a significant, usually
more than 60%, proportion of overall
revenues. More importantly, reliable and
high quality voice is a hygiene factor for
mobile operators in terms of customer
experience. Dropped calls, long setup times and poor quality audio are all
consumer turn-offs. Given that the VoLTE
standard is now three years old, it is odd

A TMN EBOOK: VOLTE - MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

that we still have only a tiny number of

operators who have deployed what is now
a three year old standard for serving voice
over IP in LTE networks. Why are we where
we are?
Certainly, sporadic or geographically
patchy LTE coverage is one reason why
we havent seen a quicker drive to VoLTE.
While LTE coverage remains concentrated
on specific urban markets, a fallback
solution makes more sense than VoLTE,
which provides its principal benefits across
areas of continuous or widespread LTE
coverage. But operators surely do not
plan to limit LTE to a few markets for any
more than the near term, and certainly
as more digital spectrum comes online in
many markets we will see wider geographic
coverage rolled out over the next 12-18
months. So while limited network rollout
may be one short term explanation, it
cannot explain the overall lack of strategic
drive to VoLTE. Perhaps we must look for
another reason.
One place to look is that it takes a
brave person to outline the case for
more investment in voice technology at

the moment. Overall voice revenues are

declining or showing signs of peaking partly
because of the popularity of device or
OS-centric services such as Facetime, or
internet-based services such as Skype, but
in much larger part due to the effects of
competition and regulatory intervention on
termination rates.
Making the case for investment in
something to support voice is a hard
thing to do. As long as good enough
voice is supported, making upfront CAPEX
investments in an IMS just on the costbenefit analysis of providing voice is much
more challenging to justify.
There are other reasons too. There is
a perception that the deployment of an
IMS, which is required for the support of
VoLTE, is extremely costly and complex
to integrate in existing mobile networks.
Allied to this are additional concerns
around signalling load between policy,
charging and application servers in the
core network, device support being thin on
the ground - especially in implementation
of SR-VCC capability - and ensuring quality
of service across the network.

Acquiring new spectrum is a

significant investment for mobile
operators - certainly much more than
an investment in an IMS.
A VoLTE deployment can reduce
or defer new spectrum purchases,
easily justifying an IMS investment for VoLTE.

MAKING THE CASE FOR VoLTE

Any assessment of the decision criteria
to invest in VoLTE must also comprise
ongoing OPEX savings for all network
operations; as well as the need to increase
capacity for other LTE services. One of
the principal savings, long term, can come
from consolidating mobile networks onto
an IP architecture. Voice services in a 3G
infrastructure are circuit switched while
data services run on separate IP backbone
meaning that a contemporary 3G operator
has to manage two networks concurrently.
By embracing VoLTE in an LTE deployment,
voice, data and video services are all
supported over IP.
Whilst consolidating mobile networks is
a complex migration and transformation,
the economics mean that consolidating
multiple technologies should remain
an attractive long term goal for most
operators. In South Korea and Japan we
are seeing operators do just that, with
aggressive 2G and 3G switch off plans.
VoLTE is a key enabling technology in those
strategic aims, as it provides the core voice
infrastructure of those future network,
ensuring both a protected consumer
experience and longevity for the voice
revenue stream.
There are other benefits too, from VoLTE.
The technology provides a dramatically
shorter call set up time than fallback
technologies, with VoLTE calls able to be
established in as little as 0.25 seconds,
compared to 5-10 seconds for calls falling
back to the 3G circuit switched network.
VoLTE also brings with it support for
HD voice codecs in an interoperable way
between devices across an operators
network. HD Voice is of itself of growing
importance to the consumer experience.

A TMN EBOOK: VOLTE - MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

HD Voice is now available from 93 mobile

operators in 66 countries, with operator
launches growing 48% in 2013. There are
also over 250 HD voice mobile phones
announced on the market. VoLTE provides
a way for operators to efficiently offer the
consumers growing demand for HD voice
over a cost-efficient IP network.
Lets address the perceived lack of
a business case for VoLTE, and by
implication IMS. Implementing VoLTE
on an IMS structure gives operators
the chance of extending support to
other communications services such as
their own RCS services, or third party
services, on a consolidated service and
control architecture. Therefore the cost
justification for investing in an IMS can
be spread beyond core voice services to
business models that take advantage of IP
communications and web based services.
Staying with the enhanced service
opportunity, IMS end points also offer
the potential for fixed-mobile service
integration - enabling operators without a
fixed presence to compete over the top
with their telco rivals, or enabling operators
with both fixed and mobile assets to design
services that can compete with their webbased rivals.
Another long term advantage that
deploying VoLTE gives operators is the
efficient reuse of spectrum. While not
everyone buys the idea of an impending
spectrum crunch incurred by spiralling
bandwidth requirements, theres surely
no doubt that operators benefit financially
from being able to deploy LTE in as wide
a spectrum range as possible. VoLTE is
considered to be up to 95 percent more
spectrum-efficient than legacy voice
technologies, as it works in conjunction
with the underlying IMS system to enable

more simultaneous calls per MHz of

spectrum. In addition, turning off 2G,
and even 3G, towards refarming chunks
of freed spectrum for LTE growth,
gives the opportunity for operators to
take advantage of the greater spectral
efficiencies of LTE as well as consolidate
network operations.
Acquiring new spectrum is a significant
investment for mobile operators certainly
much more than an investment in an IMS.
A VoLTE deployment can reduce or defer
new spectrum purchases, easily justifying
an IMS investment for VoLTE.

HOW THE MRF SUPPORTS

IMS DEPLOYMENTS
So what of the MRF and VoLTE? Many
services in an IMS require real-time RTP
media processing, from basic VoLTE
announcements and digit collections, to
value-added services such as multimedia
conferencing and real-time mobile video
services. Importantly, these all have the
potential to drive incremental revenue
streams over and above a quality LTE voice
service. The Media Resource Function
(MRF) in an IMS architecture is designed
to support all these service requirements
in the network - under the control of the
CSCF and Telecom Application Servers
(TAS).
The IMS must also support interworking,
during a network migration phase, between
devices using legacy narrowband codecs
and HD audio codecs or mobile video.
The MRF is also an optimised resource to
deliver high capacity, scalable, multimedia
transcoding and transrating. Modern MRF
platforms can also support additional
differentiators such as our Voice Quality
Enhancement (VQE) feature set, delivering

echo cancellation, noise reduction and

packet loss concealment specifically
designed for mobile VoIP services. And
when an operator adds policy control
to ensure QoS with VoLTE and other
real-time multimedia services, they can
further differentiate their offerings from
OTT services delivered using a best-effort
Internet.

NO MORE DELAY
We have seen that deploying LTE without
the underlying IMS to support VoLTE
deprives operators of a great deal of the
benefits of LTE: spectral and operational
efficiency, network consolidation, a full
service architecture, and the ability to
combine with third party providers by
exposing service assets through RCS APIs.
These benefits all mean that the perceived
technical and cost implications of IMS
deployments can be easily offset, and the
initial capital outlay for an IMS should not
be cause for concern when considering the
longer-term benefits. Operators who are
already deploying on an IMS will take a lead
in the market, both in revenue terms and
in operational efficiency. Those who are
delaying should now take steps to deploy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Al Balasco is the Senior
Director of Product
Management, Radisys, for
the companys Media Server portfolio.
He has over 17 years of product
management, business development
and marketing experience in the
telecommunications industry.

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ACRONYM SOUP

IMS

CSFB

VoLTE

SR-VCC

CSCF

TAS

IP MULTIMEDIA
SUBSYSTEM
Standardised definition of
architectural framework for
control and delivery of IP
multimedia services.

GSMA IR.92
VOICE OVER LTE
The set of requirements
needed for device and network
to support IMS-based telephony
services over LTE.

CALL SESSION
CONTROL FUNCTION
Processes all the IP signalling
requests from IMS endpoints
via application servers.

BUSINESS CASE:

CIRCUIT SWITCH
FALLBACK
Network signalling instructs an
LTE-connected device to fall
back to 2G/3G to make or
accept an incoming call.

SINGLE RADIO VOICE

CALLCONTINUITY
Ensures call continuity by
maintaining a session as a user
moves from LTE to non-LTE
coverage.

TELEPHONY
APPLICATION SERVER
SIP application server
that supports telephony
requirements in the network.

capability
Exploit platform
ird party
to partner with th
service providers
munication
Deliver Rich Com
video calling
Services such as
d, reduce churn
to enhance bran

HD voice deployments, trials

VoLTE

GSA // www.gsacom.com

KNOW YOUR

Vodafone
Optus
T Mobile
Sasktel
Telus
China Mobile
DT
E Plus
CSL
PCCW
Bharti Airtel
Reliance Jio Infocomm
NTT DoCoMo
Softbank
Alfa
Tele2 NL
Vodafone
Yota
Mobily
StarHub
Telekom Slovenije
Telefonica
Tele2 SE
TeliaSonera
Etisalat
EE
AT&T
C-Spire
T Mobile US/MetroPCS
Sprint
US Cellular
Verizon

ER EXPERIENCE:

CONSUM
Faster

call set up times

quality,
Calls in HD Voice
lity between
bi
ra
with interope
HD voice devices
ubiquity
Continuity and
ice
of quality of serv

Portugal
Australia
Austria
Canada
Canada
China
Germany
Germany
Hong Kong
Hong Kong
India
India
Japan
Japan
Lebanon
Netherlands
Netherlands
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Sweden
UAE
UK
USA
USA
USA
USA
USA
USA

Deploying in HSPA network

Trialling VoLTE in LTE network
Trialling VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Trialling VoLTE for launch Q4 2014
VoLTE deployment is planned
VoLTE deployment is planned
VoLTE commercial network launch - 05.12.13
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Trialling VoLTE
Trialling VoLTE
VoLTE deployment is planned
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
VoLTE deployment is planned
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Studying introduction of VoLTE
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
VoLTE deployment is planned
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Trialling VoLTE
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE (test markets end 2013)
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE in LTE network
Trialling VoLTE in LTE network
Deploying VoLTE (target launch 1H 2014

FICIENCY:

OPERATIONAL EF

efficiency by
Derive spectral
m whilst still
refarming spectru
ll continuity
providing voice ca
nal
Simpler operatio
IP
l
environment - al

Y:
HE APATH
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OVER
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KEY ADV