While the world is eagerly waiting for the launch of 4G LTE, service providers are confounded with a number of issues surrounding the deployment of the technology.

 

Standardization of technologies and services demands the immediate attention as it would ensure interoperability among various service providers and facilitate hassle-free communications experience to users.

 

In a significant move in this direction, telecommunications industry leaders including Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson came together to announce a standards-based solution to ensure smooth delivery of voice and SMS on LTE networks worldwide.

 

The companies have jointly developed a technical profile for LTE voice and SMS services, also known as the One Voice Initiative. The profile defines an optimal set of existing 3GPP-specified functionalities that all industry stakeholders, including network vendors, service providers and handset manufacturers, can use to offer compatible LTE voice solutions.

 

Through this initiative, the companies aim to devise the widest possible ecosystem for LTE and to avoid fragmentation of technical solutions. With this development, LTE will serve not only for increasing data traffic, but also for continuing voice and SMS services, consortium members said.

 

The new standard will also allow network operators to quickly develop their customized LTE ecosystem in collaboration with both network equipment vendors and device manufacturers. In addition, the reassurance of global interoperability in an LTE voice landscape and the ability to offer both broadband access and telephony services over LTE will create strong foundations for future business, the participating companies said.

 

After conducting open collaborative discussions, the consortium concluded that the IP Multimedia Subsystem-based solution, as defined by 3GPP, is the most practical approach to meet consumers’ expectations for service quality, reliability and availability when moving from existing circuit switched telephony services to IP-based LTE services.

 

The consortium also said that adopting IMS will also open the path to service convergence, as IMS is able to simultaneously serve broadband wireline and LTE wireless networks.

 

The newly designed technical profile will help the telecommunications industry guarantee international roaming and interoperability for LTE voice and SMS services, ensuring subscribers continuity of these vital services – all while offering service providers a smooth and well-defined path to LTE.

 

The profile for the initial solution has been finalized and is available through the companies associated with this initiative.