A group of telecom providers including, AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Ericsson have defined a way to ensure the smooth introduction and delivery of voice and SMS services on Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks worldwide.
Reportedly, the telecommunication providers 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 offerings.
As per the discussions, the IP Multimedia Subsystem based offering, as defined by 3GPP, is the most applicable approach to meet the consumers’ expectations for service quality, reliability and availability when moving from existing circuit switched telephony services to IP-based LTE services. Therefore, this approach will also open the path to service convergence, as IMS is able to simultaneously serve broadband wireline and LTE wireless networks.
By following the jointly defined technical profile, the industry can help 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 group said in a statement.
The companies aim to ensure the widest possible ecosystem for LTE and to avoid fragmentation of technical offerings. LTE will, with this initiative, not only serve as a broadband access for increasing data traffic, but also for continuing voice and SMS services
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 companies said.
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