Telecom Companies Intro New Standard for Voice, SMS Services over LTE

In an effort to ignite the deployment of Long Term Evolution, a team of telecom companies have banded together to develop a standard to introduce and deliver voice and SMS services over LTE networks.

 

Companies including AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Sony Ericsson have developed a technical profile for LTE voice and SMS services dubbed the “One Voice initiative.” Under it, the profile defines a set of existing 3GPP-specified functionalities that network vendors, service providers and handset manufacturers, can use as a standard to offer compatible LTE voice solutions.

 

The One Voice group said its standard would help guarantee international roaming and interoperability for LTE voice and SMS services for consumers. What’s more, services providers will have a “smooth and well-defined path” to LTE, the group said

 

The group concluded that the IP Multimedia Subsystem based solution, as defined by 3GPP, is the most applicable approach designed to meet consumers' expectations for service quality, reliability and availability when they move an existing circuit switched telephony services to IP-based LTE services. This approach would also open the path to service convergence because IMS can serve broadband wireline and LTE wireless networks at the same time, the group said.

 

The goal behind the initiative is to offer the widest possible ecosystem for LTE and to avoid the fragmentation of technical solutions. Under it, LTE will boost broadband access for increasing data traffic. In addition, it will enhance continuing voice and SMS services, according One Voice. The initiative will also let network operators speed development of their LTE ecosystem to work with network equipment vendors and device manufacturers.

 

The initial profile solution for voice and SMS services has been finalized and is available through the companies mentioned above, One Voice said.

 

Of the participating companies, Verizon will likely be the first to roll out LTE deployments. At a recent company conference, Verizon demonstrated its desire to work with the community and the speed of potential of LTE.