VoLTE Comes to Life
Furthermore, the VoLTE rollouts have been accompanied by new OSS and BSS rollouts that help to maximize the ROI of the new network technology. “Amdocs has been a strategic partner for MetroPCS, with services that supported our latest milestone of being the first company in the world to launch VoLTE service,” said John Olsen, senior vice president and chief information officer of MetroPCS, in a statement. “Amdocs helped us realize maximum revenues from our 4G LTE network investment, while providing a comprehensive solution from setting policy rules to metering and billing.”
Ericsson, which was involved in enabling LG U+’s VoLTE rollout, also sees clear benefits. “With the new VoLTE technology, LG U+ will be able to offer its subscribers better voice quality and an improved user experience,” Johan Wibergh, head of Ericsson’s Networks business unit, said in a statement. “The new VoLTE services will sharpen LG U+’s competitive edge considerably and will provide the foundation for further enriching their communication services offering.”
Moving forward, a number of other providers are invested in VoLTE. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are both planning 2013 VoLTE rollouts. NTT DOCOMO has taken delivery of VoLTE test kits from vendor Ecrio, signaling an ongoing commitment to at least exploring the opportunities of VoLTE. Huawei, meanwhile, reports that in the first half of 2012 ten operators had conducted trials using that company’s VoLTE solution.
However, it bears noting that not everyone is making such an enthusiastic rush towards the technology.
The short-run benefits of adopting VoLTE may not be apparent to all providers. The technology doesn’t mean more revenue from voice services, so the additional short-term costs associated with switching to a new voice solution may not be easily justified.
TeliaSonera, the first operator to launch LTE back in 2009, seems to be among the companies reticent about VoLTE adoption. Tommy Ljunggren, VP of System Development at TeliaSonera, told Mikael Ricknas of IDG News Service that the economic drivers for implementing VoLTE still aren’t strong. VoLTE isn’t, in Ljunggren’s analysis, automatically easier than handling raw IP, nor is it cheaper than handling circuit-switched voice.
Instead, TeliaSonera is opting for Circuit-Switched Fallback, in which LTE-enabled smartphones use the faster 4G technology to access the Internet but drop down to 3G to handle telephony. This technology, too, has its drawbacks: it’s a stopgap, and it may not make as much sense for providers just jumping aboard the LTE train now as opposed to players like TeliaSonera that have been active LTE players for the better part of the past three years.
