Ericsson drops VoLGA support, DT demonstrates its viability

Ericsson has dropped its support for the VoLGA Forum, which promotes Voice over LTE via Generic Access, as an interim solution to providing voice and SMS services for LTE networks. Erik Ekudden, Ericsson's vice president of technology and industry said "there are no signs that it will be strongly supported" by mobile operators.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Telekom and Kineto continue to champion VoLGA. DT, the lone operator publicly supporting VoLGA, announced what it calls a high quality voice call over LTE using VoLGA technology and two independent test environments. Calls were made between a Kineto technology based test system at DT's headquarters in Bonn, Germany, and a second system from Alcatel-Lucent in a test center in Suttgart, Germany. Both systems supported inbound and outbound voice calling and SMS messaging between LTE devices and standard mobile and fixed devices, DT said.

 "The VoLGA test shows how operators could quickly and easily provide next generation voice services, re-using their existing core networks," said Uwe Janssen, DT's senior vice president of core networks.  "At the same time this serves as a first step to prepare networks for the industry-agreed mid- and long-term solution for voice over LTE that will be based on IMS."

Still, major operators last month came out in support of a packet-based approach to facilitate voice services. Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera and Vodafone are supporting an approach called One Voice, which is an IMS-based take on voice for LTE networks. At the time, Ericsson said its support for One Voice did not necessarily mean it was dropping support for VoLGA--a stance it has now changed.

Vendors an IMS solution can be ready within 12 months, but the relative immaturity of IMS makes that time frame questionable.

For more:
- read this Unstrung article
[1]- see this cellular-news article [2]

Related articles:
When will we see voice over LTE? [3]
Verizon, AT&T, others rally on IMS approach to voice over LTE [4]
T-Mobile, vendors establish forum to enable voice over LTE [5]
LTE voice: T-Mobile alone in pushing specs [6]
LTE: Operators split over support for legacy voice services [7]
Is voice over LTE a conundrum? [8]