eBooks

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

• Cover