Telecom Companies Team on Voice and SMS Services Over LTE

A series of leading companies from the telecommunications industry have recently announced that they managed to define a preferred manner in which voice and SMS services on Long Time Evolution (LTE) should be easily introduced on upcoming networks all around the world. Industry leaders developed a technical profile for LTE voice and SMS services, which is known as the One Voice initiative.

The new, jointly developed profile describes “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.” According to the involved companies, the technical profile is also meant to ensure that international roaming and interoperability for LTE voice and SMS services will be available.

“Open collaborative discussions have concluded that the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based solution, as defined by 3GPP, is the most applicable approach to meeting the consumers’ expectations for service quality, reliability and availability when moving from existing circuit switched telephony services to IP-based LTE services. This approach will also open the path to service convergence, as IMS is able to simultaneously serve broadband wireline and LTE wireless networks,” the team also noted.

The goal of the initiative is to guarantee that LTE will enjoy a wide ecosystem, and that fragmentation of technical solutions won't surface. The 4G standard will not be used only for broadband access and increasing data traffic, but for the availability of voice and SMS services, too. Carriers will have the opportunity to develop their LTE ecosystems faster, while collaborating both with infrastructure providers and with mobile phone makers. Moreover, the profile will also make sure that there is global interoperability when it comes to LTE voice and other services on the upcoming 4G networks.

The industry names that participated at this initiative include AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Sony Ericsson. The jointly developed profile for the initial solution is available through the companies mentioned above.