VoLTE // MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

A TMN publication in association with Radisys

A TMN eBOOK IN ASSOCIATION WITH RADISYS

A TM

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BOOK

Spon

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INTR

ODUC

TION

MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

Introduction....

Why have more operators not deployed VoLTE, or made public their intention to do so?

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 needn’t be a costly or difficult process.

We don’t 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.

Ray Adensamer: Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Radisys

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.

Hi!

MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

VoLTE Slow progress in the deployment of VoLTE has many in the industry confused, or convinced the technology will not ever be widely deployed.

You’d 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, you’d 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 set-up 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

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 operator’s network. HD Voice is of itself of growing importance to the consumer experience.

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 cost-benefit 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.

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 haven’t 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

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.

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 consumer’s growing demand for HD voice over a cost-efficient IP network.

Let’s 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 web-based 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, there’s 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 company’s Media Server portfolio. He has over 17 years of product management, business development and marketing experience in the telecommunications industry.

A TMN EBOOK: VOLTE - MOVING FROM DELAY TO DEPLOY

Standardisation, IR.92 GSMA CDMA

only (dual radio)

First operator commitments/

launches (MetroPCS,

Korea August 2012, etc)

Live SRVCC demos.

Additional access technologies

HD Voice and

Video (IR.94) calling demonstrated

VoLTE in Virtualised

core demonstrated

Roaming support.

Market launches expected (AT&T “final stages of testing”, Verizon committed, Japan)

Industry showcase/early demos

VoLTETimeline past to future:

the time is now

8MSK Telecom has the largest

number of VoLTE customers

NOV 2013

PROVIDES 26

VOLTE-CAPABLE

TERMINALS

BUSINESS CASE:

• Exploit platform capability

to partner with third party

service providers

• Deliver Rich Communication

Services such as video calling

to enhance brand, reduce churn

CONSUMER EXPERIENCE:

• Faster call set up times

• Calls in HD Voice quality,

with interoperability between

HD voice devices

• Continuity and ubiquity

of quality of service

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY:

• Derive spectral efficiency by

refarming spectrum whilst still

providing voice call continuity

• Simpler operational

environment - all IP

Roaming support.

Vodafone Portugal Deploying in HSPA networkOptus Australia Trialling VoLTE in LTE networkT Mobile Austria Trialling VoLTE in LTE networkSasktel Canada Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkTelus Canada Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkChina Mobile China Trialling VoLTE for launch Q4 2014DT Germany VoLTE deployment is plannedE Plus Germany VoLTE deployment is plannedCSL Hong Kong VoLTE commercial network launch - 05.12.13PCCW Hong Kong Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkBharti Airtel India Trialling VoLTEReliance Jio Infocomm India Trialling VoLTENTT DoCoMo Japan VoLTE deployment is plannedSoftbank Japan Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkAlfa Lebanon VoLTE deployment is plannedTele2 NL Netherlands Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkVodafone Netherlands Studying introduction of VoLTEYota Russia Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkMobily Saudi Arabia Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkStarHub Singapore VoLTE deployment is plannedTelekom Slovenije Slovenia Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkTelefonica Spain Trialling VoLTETele2 SE Sweden Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkTeliaSonera Sweden Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkEtisalat UAE Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkEE UK Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkAT&T USA Deploying VoLTE (test markets end 2013)C-Spire USA Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkT Mobile US/MetroPCS USA Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkSprint USA Deploying VoLTE in LTE networkUS Cellular USA Trialling VoLTE in LTE networkVerizon USA Deploying VoLTE (target launch 1H 2014

OVERCOME THE APATHY:

KEY ADVANTAGES OF VoLTE:

IMS IP MULTIMEDIA SUBSYSTEMStandardised definition of architectural framework for control and delivery of IP multimedia services.

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

CSCF CALL SESSION CONTROL FUNCTIONProcesses all the IP signalling requests from IMS endpoints via application servers.

CSFB CIRCUIT SWITCH FALLBACKNetwork signalling instructs an LTE-connected device to “fall back” to 2G/3G to make or accept an incoming call.

SR-VCC SINGLE RADIO VOICE CALLCONTINUITYEnsures call continuity by maintaining a session as a user moves from LTE to non-LTE coverage.

TAS TELEPHONY APPLICATION SERVERSIP application server that supports telephony requirements in the network.

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