Voice and SMS over LTE

VoLGA is dead… Long live Rhine?!?!!?

 Not surprisingly, Deutsche Telekom finally capitulated to the ‘rest of the industry,’ declaring they too would follow the path of CS-Fallback and on to IMS (VoLTE) for voice over LTE.  

Followers of the site already know the facts:  

• The VoLGA specs have been done for nearly 18 months now.  
• VoLGA systems were demonstrated at MWC 2010 (a year ago).
• VoLGA systems demonstrated support for ALL circuit services, plus all those ‘crazy’ advanced services like pre-paid, plus all those ‘boring’ USSD network services.
• VoLGA support in the handset is extremely simple.
• VoLGA is practically built in to the handsets Kineto is supporting with Smart Wi-Fi today.

But that’s not why I wanted to write this post.  There are three trends which lead me to believe that while VoLGA may be ‘dead’ today, there’s a new river preparing to rise up.  

First, in nearly every meeting with vendors involved with bringing voice over LTE devices to market, there was a universal look of panic/dread/despair.  It seems that while these vendors keep up a good front to their perspective (and current) customers, when talking off-the-record, it’s clear there are some major issues with CS-Fallback (not really a surprise), and that IMS is a lot farther away than anyone really wants so say.  

Second, we’re starting to have the panic discussions with the mid/low level folks at the service providers – the people who actually have to do the work.  They are under the gun to deliver something that looks increasingly difficult.  Who knew you may have to align your LTE cell plan with GSM cells to meet acceptable handover delays?  Who knew that you end up with a much higher signaling load on the HLR with CS-Fallback?  Who new you needed to upgrade your existing GSM MSCs to support CS-Fallback?  Who knew that ‘falling back’ to GSM would introduce unacceptable levels of call drops?  

Finally, I was amazed at the number of analysts who came by to say “Don’t worry, ‘VoLGA’ may be dead, but the concept is still the fastest, cheapest voice solution for LTE.”   “Just wait,” they said. “Give the industry another year or two to really work into a panic, and then re-launch it as a different river…”  

There is no doubt in my mind that VoLGA is the fastest, cheapest, most effective way to deliver voice over LTE.  While we’re waiting, I think I’ll start exploring other rivers in Europe.  

 

VoLGA Results Exceed Expectations

In the excitement of Mobile World Congress last week, you may have missed the announcement that VoLGA testing conducted with Deutsche Telekom’s next generation mobile test network using LTE technology and a VoLGA solution from Kineto, delivers call-setup times up to 65 percent faster than alternative LTE voice technologies, such as CS Fallback. In the testing, VoLGA outperformed 3G network call-setup times by nearly 40 percent.

Visitors to the Deutsche Telekom and Kineto stands at MWC were given a real-life opportunity to make VoLGA calls, and the buzz was overwhelmingly positive.

"We were confident that VoLGA would deliver a superior user experience, and now we have the test results to prove it," said Franz Seiser, head of core network technology at Deutsche Telekom. "Customers who subscribe to next generation network services will expect performance to exceed today’s technologies, and it’s clear VoLGA can meet those expectations."

Patrick Tao, Kineto's vice president of technology, added:"VoLGA is very focused on delivering a better user experience than 3G. Our testing has already shownquantitative improvements over CS Fallback in the areas of faster call-setup times, lower dropped call rates, and the ability to talk and surf the Internet at the same time."

Watch this space for more good news about VoLGA.

VoLGA in Barcelona

The biggest event of the year for the mobile industry - Mobile World Congress 2010 - is fast approaching. I leave for Barcelona a week from Friday. From the VoLGA front, there will be some exciting displays during the conference.

With LTE deployments beginning in earnest, VoLGA is the low cost, low risk approach to bringing all of today’s voice and SMS services to this new network and setting a path to IMS. At the conference, Kineto and Deutsche Telekom (DT) will have live voice over LTE demonstrations based on VoLGA technology.

The demonstration will be based on the successful testing the two companies recently completed 

in Bonn, Germany. The VoLGA-based Voice over LTE system supported inbound and outbound voice calling and SMS messaging between LTE-enabled devices and standard mobile and fixed telephones.

I've written about VoLGA testing here before.

Kineto's stand is located in Hall 1, A45, adjacent to the doors exiting Hall 1 into the Courtyard. DT/T-Mobile will be at Stand Z3.16. Stop by both and see a demo.

Two networks, no voice; One network, two voices

This week there were two more announcements of LTE networks.  

One, Telia Sonera, announced they have a commercial LTE service available in Stockholm and Oslo.  No voice… well, really not a surprise.  There are no LTE phones.  Of course, it would be cool for Telia to bundle their own VoIP service in with the USB dongle, but hey, one step at a time.  It only takes uses a second to download Skype…

The other announcement was O2 conducting LTE trials in Slough, UK.  Two operators, no voice.  

Of course, last week Deutsche Telekom announced they has TWO voice over LTE systems running.  One operator, two voices.  

Given that voice is expected to account for nearly 70% of total mobile revenues in 2014, it would seem that getting voice onto LTE would be a priority.  

DT - Two VoLGA Systems Up and Running

Today Deutsche Telekom (aka T-Mobile) announced the "worlds first VoLGA call".  But really it was much more than that.  DT showed the mobile industry a couple things about VoLGA:

First, it's relatively to implement, especially for vendors with a background in UMA.  Not one, but two vendors stepped up with VoLGA Gateways, Alcatel-Lucent and Kineto.  Presumably Ericsson could do VoLGA too, as they have a UMA/GAN controller as well.  Remember, the VoLGA Forum went live in March 09, and here we are in December, just 9 months later, and there are two working systems.  

For devices, this will become doubly important.  Nearly all the major handset vendors (Nokia, Samsung, LGE, Sony/Ericsson, Motorola, HTC, RIM,...) have already implemented UMA/GAN.  Modifying and simplifying that implementation to an LTE device for VoLGA support is very straightforward.  

Second, for operators, VoLGA relatively easy to deploy.  Presumably DT doesn't have extra lab resources laying around to make a lot of changes to the core network.  The VoLGA Controller connects to an MSC through a standard 3G (Iu) interface.  Clearly for a commercial deployment, there would need to be some element management system, but to make calls, the VoLGA systems only needed an Iu interface.  Pretty simple. 

Third, DT now has ALL their mobile services running over LTE.  This isn't just 'dialtone', with years of additional work to actually turn 'dialtone' into a viable commercial mobile voice service.  This is T-Mobile's commercial mobile voice service running on LTE --  all the standard and wacky telephony features (call waiting, forward, transfer, hold, conference,...) as well as the revenue generating Intelligent Network applications like pre-paid, toll free, and LNP.  And certainly no need to run endless tests checking to see if the macro network 'falls back' the right way.  

It is clear that VoLGA is the interim (and first) step on the way to IMS voice.  

One on One: Franz Seiser Talks VoLGA

I recently had a chance to sit down with Franz Seiser, head of core network architecture for Deutsche Telekom, formerly T-Mobile International, to chat about voice and SMS over the LTE network. We discussed the evolution of LTE as it leads the industry down the path to IMS. Franz said that the industry consensus today is that IMS will be the longer-term solution, but it is still a ways off. An interim solution is necessary. Watch the video in which Franz and I briefly discuss steps and roadblocks to IMS; options for voice and SMS over LTE; and advantages for VoLGA.