According to Dell’Oro Group, Voice over Long Term Evolution projects generated more than $200 million in the past four quarters, as wireless operators have begun investing in network infrastructure to support moving voice from 3G to 4G LTE.
“The most important trend underway in the telecom voice market is VoLTE,” said Chris DePuy, analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “It is stimulating significant spending both in the wireless infrastructure, but also in the wireline infrastructure.”
MetroPCS (PCS) was the first U.S. carrier to make a VoLTE commercial launch. The company introduced the LG Connect smartphone for making VoLTE calls in the Dallas/Fort Worth, TX market in early August. Korea’s SK Telecom has also introduced VoLTE services.
Verizon Wireless is expected to add VoLTE capability by next year, but has said that it is waiting for quality issues to be worked out before launch.
Mavenir Systems provided the IMS core and telephony application server for MetroPCS’s VoLTE service. Madan Jagernauth, vice president of marketing and strategy for Mavenir, said that the first step carriers need to make is to ensure a familiar customer experience in VoLTE.
“The customer experience has to be exactly the same: call waiting, call conferencing, emergency calling for 911 – all of that has to work the same way,” said Jagernauth. “Getting that to work is the first step.”
VoLTE lays the foundation for operators to move toward rich communications services — which MetroPCS has said that it plans to launch later this year. The next generation of data communications is expected to include the ability to send longer text messages, photos that can be sent via MMS at full resolution, group video sharing, and other applications.
