John Igwebuike, head of FMCG Group, Swift Networks Ltd, Nigeria

John Igwebuike, head of FMCG Group, Swift Networks Ltd, Nigeria, is speaking on Day One of the LTE Africa conference, taking place on the 9th-10th July 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa. Ahead of the show he gives us an overview of the Nigerian telecoms markets and the challenges facing operators seeking to deploy LTE in the country.

 Please give me an overview of Swift Networks and tell me more about your customers and the wider MNO market in Nigeria.

Swift Networks Limited, founded in 2002, is a facilities–based telecommunications service provider licensed to provide multi-service broadband connectivity services to businesses and residential subscribers. It holds an exclusive wireless spectrum license from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), allowing it to operate end-to-end reliable, fibre-like connectivity services in the exclusively licensed and interference-free 3.5GHz spectrum.

Our vision is to create a full-spectrum telecommunications institute of choice, differentiated by superior quality of service, consistently creating value for all stakeholders through innovative, leading-edge products, delivered by a high quality work force, utilising the best in modern technology. Our services include fast and secure broadband internet access, virtual private networking services, Voice over IP, collocation services, secure video conferencing and surveillance solutions and other value added services. Our clients include individuals, small, medium and enterprise organisations in the major industry sectors of the economy.

The LTE Africa conference is taking place on the 9^th-10^th July 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa. Click here to download the brochure for the event.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest and most competitive mobile market with about 110 million subscribers, and yet in early 2013 the market penetration stands at only around 70 per cent.  Subscriber growth has been on the increase driven by lower prices and a growing demand for mobile broadband services. The rapid growth has led to problems with network congestion and quality of service, prompting the regulatory authority NCC to impose fines and sanctions.

Much of the remaining addressable market is in the country’s rural areas where network rollouts and operations are expensive. This in combination with declining ARPU levels is forcing the networks to streamline their operations and to develop new revenue streams from services such as mobile payments/banking, and others. At the same time the operators are rolling out national fibre backbone networks to support the ever increasing demand for bandwidth.

What are the biggest challenges to LTE roll out in Nigeria and the wider continent?

Long-term evolution ­(LTE), also known as 4G, is critical to the introduction of advanced broadband services in Nigeria. However in my view, two major challenges face the deployment of the technology. These are:

1. Spectrum availability. 4G deployment is constrained by spectrum availability. The 700MHz digital dividend and 2.6GHz frequencies, which are acclaimed by the ITU as most suitable for LTE deployment in sparsely (rural) and densely (urban) areas respectively, are not currently available for use by the telecommunications industry but are currently deployed for broadcast services by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC)
2. High CAPEX outlay. Roll-out of LTE networks is capital intensive and as such, though operators are aware of the prospects of first-mover advantage, they prefer to carry out due diligence before launching, in order to ensure good returns on investment. Simple economics reveals that in the short term, LTE will be taken up by existing customers in the high income urban nodes. Hence, to increase uptake and revenue in these regions in the shortest possible time, operators’ should focus their strategies in this direction.

Are you considering network sharing agreements to lower costs and what are the regulatory issues surrounding this?

Certainly, sharing network infrastructure not only reduces both CAPEX and OPEX but also positively impacts the environment by reducing pollution, as fewer towers will be required. This is part of our strategy. The Nigerian telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), promotes infrastructure sharing and co-location among operators in line with her guidelines. The guidelines establish a framework within which operators can negotiate co-location and infrastructure-sharing arrangements, as well as promoting fair competition through the grant of equal access to operators’ installations and facilities on mutually agreed terms.

What particular challenges does Africa face in terms of backhaul provision?

To keep up with the increase in data consumption driven by the mobile broadband Wireless Access services, most operators are making significant investments in their backhaul networks. For example, operators are transitioning from TDM-based backhaul to Ethernet-ready microwave as well as acceleration in fibre to the cell sites. All these are cost intensive. In addition, in some cases it is practically impossible to backhaul over fibre especially over long distances, hence operators resort to microwave radios.

How do small cells fit into your strategy?

Mobile operators use small cells to extend their service coverage and/or increase network capacity. With small cells, mobile operators can offload traffic as much as 80 per cent during peak times

Operators have increasingly begun to rely on the use of small cells for their 3G networks. With small cells, operators can use many cells distributed across a geographical area to provide better coverage and satisfy customer demands.  Small cells are an integral part of future LTE networks.

What do you think will be the single most exciting new LTE related technology development in 2013?

An imminent need exists for incorporating global voice and messaging solutions in the new LTE platform, which offers higher capacities and lower latencies. GSMA VoLTE will likely become the industry standard for voice and SMS over LTE. I believe this will be perfected before the end of 2013 and will represent the most exciting new LTE related technology.

Pierre François Dubois, VP product development, Technocentre, Orange, France

Pierre François Dubois, VP product development, Technocentre, Orange, France is speaking on ‘Maximising the benefits of LTE with RCS’ on Day One of the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Ahead of the show we speak to him about how RCS will both benefit consumers and help to maximise operator revenue.

Your talk is on maximising the benefits of RCS and VoLTE for the customer. However, consumers already have effective voice and OTT apps. Can you highlight what the benefits of using these will be?

There are three key benefits for customers. Firstly, RCS will be adopted by all mobile operators, which means that everyone’s friends will have access to a rich and reliable set of services. They will not need to be invited and then download an app – it will just be there. Secondly, RCS also provides a fantastic eco-system for app developers, as well as providing them a massive audience for their apps and services. Customers will therefore be able to enhance their lives with all sorts of fun and productivity applications with real-time sharing. Thirdly, VoLTE completes the picture by transferring voice communications to IP thus ensuring that all the RCS sharing and communications features can be done simultaneously with voice and video calls, and all at Telco quality. The combination of RCS, LTE and VoLTE means that customers will have no reason to go elsewhere for the social or business communications.

How can operators make best use of RCS services to increase revenues?

Market research tells us that customers are happy to buy extra data bundles for services which add value to their lives. This is what we already do with specific applications like Deezer or Orange consumer cloud. Mobile data usage will therefore drive revenues in the future. With this objective in mind, RCS provides a core set of IP based communication services and APIs that are designed to stimulate data usage and this is why RCS APIs are important for our future. For example, video applications can leverage these APIs for the benefits of both parties. Social networks can also contribute to this objective, but I believe MNOs must have their own growth engine to better control their business model.

Will VoLTE be an upsell to consumers or will it just be a transparent service for consumers with a transition that occurs in the background.

VoLTE will simply replace circuit switched voice and, whilst it certainly brings a better experience, I don’t believe it will be an upsell to consumers. VoIP and RCS over LTE together will provide a great customer experience with many added-value applications and together drive data usage and revenues.

What do you think will be the most critical development in LTE over the next six to 12 months?

I think that until recently, most MNOs have worked on RCS, LTE and VoLTE projects with different timelines. Nevertheless we need to anticipate, not only technically, the fact that we are migrating to IP communications. I foresee two important challenges:

• RCS over LTE with seamless switching  and continuity of sessions when switching between 4G/3G/Wifi/2G
• Convergence between RCS and VoLTE as a consistent service platform. Orange strongly supports the initiative launched recently by the GSMA to address this point.

Please tell me why coming to the LTE World Summit is so important for yourself and for Orange and why it’s a great event.

LTE is a true revolution for our industry. It is always difficult to guess what will come out of a revolution and in our case a lot of uncertainties remain for the future of our business model. I think this event is a unique opportunity to share possible scenarios both on technical and marketing aspects with experts in our industry. As it takes place in Europe, where competition is very fierce, I expect the presentation and the debates to help us better shape the future.

Michele Zarri, head of international standardisation and IP management, Deutsche Telekom, UK

Michele Zarri, head of international standardisation and IP management, Deutsche Telekom, UK, is speaking on VoLTE vs OTT Voice on Day Two of the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Speaking ahead of the show, Zarri explains why he feels the operator provided voice services will still offer benefits to consumers over OTT VoIP applications.

What is your timeline for VoLTE and what benefits will it bring?

Early versions of VoLTE have already been launched in some markets such as Korea and Hong Kong. Operators are currently focussing on deploying LTE, but deployment of IMS platforms, accelerated by the desire to launch Joyn, is taking place simultaneously. Additionally, given the availability of devices compliant to the GSMA’s IR.92 standard, expected during the course of 2013, there is no technical impediment to launching VoLTE. As a consequence I expect to see commercial services rolled out by the end of this year (2013) in most developed markets with international roaming launched within two years after that.

From an operator point of view, the main benefit of VoLTE is being able to provide the voice service natively over the packet switched access, while avoiding disruption to back-office processes. This removes the last constraint justifying the running of circuit-switched networks; therefore achieving the objective of moving fully to the more efficient packet-switched access.

What appeal will VoLTE have to consumers over and above their favourite OTT apps?

Today customers are already replacing the mobile operators offered voice service with their favourite OTT application. The reasons why OTT apps have not been adopted in large scale therefore is not the availability of broadband mobile access, but due rather to the benefits offered by operator-supplied voice. Such advantages will not be lost in the migration to VoLTE. What I am thinking of is reach (call and be called by anyone), security (a trusted relationship with the operator and strong encryption), privacy (user data is safe with an operator), familiar interface (voice client is natively integrated in the handset), seamless user experience (use of phone numbers, set of supplementary services), predictability (well-known charging scheme) and, last but not least, quality, as the network is configured to prioritise voice traffic over other types of traffic.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

Will VoLTE sound significantly better than current voice calls?

Calls between two VoLTE users will use the HD voice codec, resulting in a far superior experience. In fact HD Voice is already available over 3G networks, therefore in time the vast majority of the mobile to mobile calls will enjoy the benefits of such a codec. Fast forwarding a few years, as IMS allows the device of the caller and of the called party to negotiate the codec used, it is imaginable that new and more powerful codecs will be introduced and used for Voice over IMS calls.

Why was VoLTE not baked into LTE from initial launch of the technology?

The goal of 3GPP when developing LTE was primarily to create a radio technology that could meet the IMT‑advanced requirements issued by ITU, therefore the service layer was not in focus. Furthermore, in 2008, when the LTE specifications were released, IMS was already a three-year old technology and earmarked as the means to create voice services over a packet switched access. In fact, you will notice that no service except connectivity was, to use your expression, baked into LTE, though the low-latency target and support for guaranteed bit-rate were evidently tailored for the support of voice and other multimedia services.

Is any kind of VoLTE launch practical without SRVCC widely implemented?  (In a network without SRVCC implemented, please explain what happens when a VoLTE call is made to a handset that goes out of LTE coverage?)

Indeed SRVCC will be important functionality in the early days of VoLTE due to the expected patchy LTE coverage. However, when operators start rolling out voice over HSPA, which has also been profiled in GSMA, the occurrence of SRVCC events will become much less frequent, since the far more efficient packet switched handover will be used instead to move from LTE to 3G. Other positive aspects are that field tests by Deutsche Telekom have shown that the predicted long interruption of the service in case of SRVCC have been overestimated.

As a VoLTE call would fail when the handset goes out of coverage, operators are unlikely to deploy VoLTE until SRVCC is available and will instead rely on CS Fallback, whereby the handset moves to a legacy access technology prior setting up a call.

Do you believe that RCS services can genuinely help the industry compete with OTT?

Contrary to this widespread misconception, competing with OTT is not the goal of Deutsche Telekom. Arrogant as it may sound, Deutsche Telekom will not lower its standards to those of some of the OTT offers currently available to consumers. The goal of RCSe is instead to offer an integrated and secure service for which there is demand in the market, adding all the benefits described above for VoLTE as well as other specific ones. RCS will also show that even traditional mobile operators can offer innovative services. For example, Joyn is a product based on the RCS-e standard and provided by the mobile operator community. The next version of RCS will be fully supported by IMS, bringing additional benefits for the consumer.

Korean maker Samsung said that it has developed a core technology for 5G and intends to enable users to access 5G data services by 2020.

Korean manufacturer Samsung said that it has made headway in developing core technology for 5G networks with a view to bringing data services to market by 2020, according to local reports.

The firm said that 5G speeds will allow users to download an entire movie in less than a second, according to Korea’s Yonhap news agency.  It added that users will be able to download and upload data at speeds of up to tens of Gbps, compared with the 75Mbps speeds that 4G LTE services offer today.

The Korean firm also told the news agency it has successfully tested the platform using the 28GHz spectrum band to transmit data at a speed of 1Gbps.

With LTE network deployments now underway in many countries globally, the industry is gradually beginning to turns its sight to the provision of 5G services. In April this year, UK regulator Ofcom launched an industry consultation about freeing radio frequencies for 5G services.

In October 2012, the University of Surrey also received £35m research funding for its 5G Innovation Centre, from the UK government and firms including Samsung, Huawei, Telefonica Europe and Aircom International. And in March 2013, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) established a working group to research 5G technology.

The 5G Expo is part of the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a free pass.

Raspberry Pi core network

The industry’s march toward commodity hardware continued apace this week, as system integrator and small cell specialist Quortus squeezed a core network with full GSM, 3G and LTE support onto a Raspberry Pi.

The company said that its aim is to take mobile core network functionality and distil it in to an application that can be run on commodity hardware, instead of the expensive heavy iron infrastructure currently used. Quortus’ flagship product, SoftCore, placed a core network with full GSM, 3G and LTE support in an application with as small a footprint as possible, in this case, the $35 Raspberry Pi.

The software mobile core application turned the Raspberry Pi into a fully functioning 3G and 4G network core and by adding a regular residential femtocell created a complete mobile network able to fully support voice calls, SMS and data over 3G and LTE.

The caveat is that this project isn’t necessarily immediately suitable for commercial use. “But it goes some way to illustrate how our software can be used to lower the costs of network deployments and can be installed on low-cost, non-proprietary hardware or even to enable a ‘virtual core’ model where an operator or MVNO can have its core network hosted by a third party,” the company said.

This is not the first such attempt to make use of a Raspberry Pi in a mobile network. Earlier this year telecoms consultancy PA Consulting crammed a GSM cellular basestation onto the three inch device.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

Chris Chapman, ACMA Chair, has taken issue with comments from Coleago

The head of the Australian telecoms regulator has hit back at allegations that the recent spectrum auction was “damaging to the economy” and dismissed claims that one of the country’s three operators was deterred from participating by high reserve prices. The criticisms were levelled at ACMA by the CEO of spectrum auction planning specialist Coleago Consulting on Wednesday.

Coleago’s Stefane Zehle suggested that, by setting too high a reserve price for the 700MHz spectrum auction, ACMA had deterred one of the three Australian mobile operators, Vodafone’s VHA, from bidding. “ACMA’s failure could hardly be more complete,” Zehle said, arguing that the price had resulted in a 2x15MHZ swathe of 700MHz spectrum going unsold.

But ACMA chair Chris Chapman has hit back at Zehle, telling Telecoms.com that, in October 2012, Vodafone announced it did not need to buy the spectrum that was being offered in the digital dividend auction because it has sufficient spectrum to provide LTE services in the future. “Vodafone’s CEO, Bill Morrow, made this announcement two months before the Minister directed the ACMA to set the reserve price for the 700MHz band at A$1.36/MHz/pop,” Chapman said.

He added that Vodafone had also refrained from bidding for licences in the 2.5GHz band, “even though it is hard to characterise the reserve price for this band (A$0.03 per MHz/pop) as extremely high, and indeed all 2.5GHz lots were sold.”

The auction generated revenues of nearly A$2bn, yet Zehle claimed that “potentially several billion dollars of benefit to the economy had been lost,” given that the auction was estimated to deliver a net benefit to the Australian economy of between A$7bn and A$10bn.

Chapman argued that Zehle’s assessment of net benefit was well beyond figures quoted for expected auction revenue in the media and seem to be based on speculations about the overall economic benefits resulting from subsequent network rollout and operation. “Such benefits would, of course, be hard to calculate from the auction results alone,” he said.

“The ACMA expects that consumers will benefit from the substantial increase in spectrum holdings for Telstra and Optus resulting from this auction.  Telstra and Optus would not have bought this spectrum if they didn’t believe it would improve their position in offering competitive services to consumers.  Vodafone says it also intends to compete vigorously in the mobile broadband market using its existing spectrum assets.  In addition, the auction has brought a new entrant to the market (TPG Internet ) with its own spectrum holding.

“The ACMA is optimistic that all these companies will invest in the community when they commence 4G services, which will further transform the way Australians communicate and do business,” Chapman said.

On the matter of unsold spectrum, ACMA confirmed that three continuous lots, or 15MHz paired, of 700MHz spectrum remains vacant and available for allocation to the Australian industry at some future date.

The LTE Asia conference is taking place on the 18^th-19^th September 2013 at the Suntec, Singapore. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

Sprint Nextel has blamed delays by equipment vendors stifling the rollout of its Network Vision project

US operator Sprint Nextel has blamed delays caused by equipment vendors for stifling the rollout of its Network Vision project, in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, the operator said that it had been forced to revise its plans to bring 12,000 multi-mode base stations on-air by the end of 2012, pushing the deadline back to 1Q13.

Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung all supply equipment to Sprint as part of its Network Vision project.

“The deployment of multi-mode technology is project managed by Sprint but dependent upon three primary OEMs, each of which has responsibility for a geographical territory across the United States,” Sprint explained in the filing.

“We have recently experienced delays with vendor execution, backhaul connectivity delays, shortages in equipment such as fiber cable and antennas, as well as other regulatory and environmental issues.”

The operator added that the delays have caused an increase in depreciation to existing Nextel and Sprint assets.

Sprint said it expects to recover from the delays and is still forecasting to have the majority of its sites on-air by the end of 2013. Its Network Vision LTE network deployment is now expected to be completed by the middle of 2014.

The LTE North America conference is taking place on the 21st-22nd November 2013, in Dallas, Texas, USA. Click here NOW to download a brochure for the event.

TeliaSonera has announced that its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo will launch LTE services in July

Swedish operator group TeliaSonera has announced that its Spanish subsidiary Yoigo will launch LTE services in July. In doing so, it will become the first in Spain to offer 4G services.

Yoigo is Spain’s smallest mobile network operator in terms of subscriber numbers, according to Informa’s WCIS service.  However, parent TeliaSonera has a considerable experience in launching 4G networks. In 2009 it became the first operator to launch 4G services in Sweden and Norway, and has since launched LTE services  in all of its Nordic and Baltic markets.

Madrid will be the first city to be served by Yoigo’s 4G and the rest of Spain’s largest cities will be connected by the end of the year,  covering 37 per cent of the population. By the end of 2014, 75 per cent of the population is expected to be able to use the technology,  TeliaSonera added.

”We are in the lead of the industry and are answering upon the customers increasing demand of mobile surf by offering the latest technology to our customers, now also as the first operator in Spain”, said Per-Arne Blomqvist, acting CEO of TeliaSonera.

”Our customers shall have the best possible experience of mobile services, the highest speed of mobile surf and also the best mobile coverage”.

The service uses the 1800MHz spectrum band and will offer users a speeds of up to 100Mbps. Orange Spain, Telefonica and Vodafone only had GSM and W-CDMA offerings on the market as of March 2013, according to Informa’s WCIS service.

LTE World Summit 2013 will take place on 24-26 June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands 

Mock Pak Lum

StarHub is the second placed operator in Singapore, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Mobile penetration in the market is just shy of 160 per cent and four operators (one of which, DNA Comms, is a small iDEN player) are battling in what is, figuratively and literally, a very tight space.

StarHub launched LTE service in refarmed 1800MHz spectrum during the third quarter of 2012 and, while the firm has not released recent subscriber numbers for the service, an estimate from Informa’s WCIS Plus put the number of LTE subscriptions at 1,750 for 1Q13.

Mock already has one eye on LTE Advanced and says that StarHub is keen to get as much spectrum in Singapore’s upcoming auction as possible with a view to implementing carrier aggregation solutions. The Singaporean Government has voiced plans for an auction sometime in the middle of 2013, which will see further 1800MHz spectrum and 2.5GHz spectrum made available to the market’s operators.

“We will try and get as much as we can and we will have to make sure we get spectrum in both bands so that, with aggregation later on, we are able to offer a better customer experience,” Mock says.

The firm’s GSM subscriptions are in reasonably steep decline, with Informa estimating the total at 556,300 for end March 2013, down from 701,600 for the same point in 2012. As in other markets, spectrum is a tight commodity, but the time is not yet right to run down the GSM network in order to harvest the spectrum, says Mok Pack Lum, StarHub’s CTO.

“We have not announced any dates for this,” he says, “and we are still monitoring the traffic. There are two categories of users that will continue to need GSM; the people who roam into Singapore from neighbouring countries and the foreign workers who tend to be either labourers or domestic workers and have GSM phones.”

Nonetheless, Mock says, StarHub is keen to migrate customers onto its 3G network. “GSM is still a significant portion of our voice traffic but we’re trying to see how we can move as many people as possible from 2G to 3G so we can free up more of the 1800MHz spectrum for our LTE offerings.”

Given the small size of the Singaporean market, roaming—both inbound and outbound—is a crucial revenue stream for local operators. But there is little urgency around provisioning roaming services for LTE, Mock says. “At this point we are not concerned about LTE roaming. We are talking to our partners about it and we are putting in our diameter infrastructure. But we think that 2G and 3G will remain the most significant source of roaming traffic,” he says.

He adds that StarHub is “engaging IPX providers” for roaming services but that the firm is also considering “other multilateral initiatives”. This may be a reference to South Korean operator SK Telecom, which has made clear its intention to act as an LTE roaming hub for the Asia Pacific region.

Mock is similarly relaxed about VoLTE. For early movers to VoLTE the principal driver has been the need to consolidate to a single network technology. But for StarHub the technology is most interesting for the opportunities it offers in terms of enhanced services, Mock says.

“We are doing some [VoLTE] trials but I don’t know when we will be offering it,” he says. “The question today is which handsets are available. But the ability to combine voice with other IP applications is the most important impetus for us and that is down the line,” he says.

StarHub’s more urgent priority is extending the reach of its LTE network—and in Singapore this isn’t always easy. There are many high rise buildings and “the biggest challenge,” Mock says, “is providing coverage up to the 50^th floor.” Meanwhile all public housing in Singapore must contain a reinforced concrete bomb shelter with very thick walls, which presents a unique penetration problem.

“We’re hoping that, as vendors come up with integrated solutions, hetergenous networks and small cells, it will help solve our problems,” Mock says. StarHub plans to have nationwide outdoor coverage by the end of this year, up from around 60 per cent today.

But LTE is not StarHub’s sole network challenge . There are still coverage obligations to meet for the 3G network—the Singaporean government announced in April that the market’s operators were required to achieve 99 per cent outdoor coverage and 85 per cent indoor coverage and StarHub is awaiting confirmation that it has hit this target. It is in the firm’s interests to do so as it should help encourage users to move across from the GSM network, Mock says.

LTE has been simpler to deploy than 3G, though. Mock says that the most challenging aspect of deployment that the operator faced was refarming the spectrum—a challenge that was mitigated by the fact that the same vendor, Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied both the GSM and LTE networks.

Dependence on vendors is a reality for all operators and Ericsson’s head of LTE recently suggested that single vendor environments will provide better results in heterogenous networks, so does Mock Pak Lum agree? “Without having done any direct tests in this area, I would think that this would be so. Having a single vendor could be a more efficient and elegant way of providing coverage,” he says.

The LTE Asia 2013 event takes place in Singapore, September 18 – 19. For more information click here.

Getting IMS-based VoLTE services to interwork with legacy services will be a fundamental challenge to VoLTE

The most challenging aspect of introducing Voice over LTE services (VoLTE) will be deciding how and whether to transition individual legacy voice services to the new domain, according to Michel Lenoir, programme manager for LTE at Vodafone Netherlands. The move to VoLTE gives operators a chance to reassess their voice services portfolio but the range of options open to them is wide and operators must be clear about which services they want to keep and how best to maintain them, Lenoir told Telecoms.com.

“With all the IN-based vocie services in our core network we need to decide what we’re going to do with them,” he said. “Do we port them into an IMS domain and, if so, how? Do we secure interworking with the circuit switched domain and the new IMS domain?  There are all sorts of options and, for me, this is the most challenging discussion that we have.”

Some services may be wound down but others are “so key to the user experience”, Lenoir said, that they have to be maintained. Some can be ported across to VoLTE while for others the service logic might remain in the legacy network requiring Vodafone to “try to build a proxy” for them.

Vodafone Netherlands is working with specialist software provider OpenCloud on this issue and OpenCloud’s head of marketing Mark Windle told Telecoms.com that gaps in the LTE standard mean that operators will have to find their own route through these interoperability issues.

“There are parts within the standards for VoLTE relating to how IMS networks and legacy networks interoperate where the standard effectively says ‘we don’t know how to do this, it will be done by some unspecified magic in the service layer’,” said Windle. “Operators have to find a way of doing that themselves and best practice will hopefully emerge.”

While the solution will be technical the service decisions will be made by marketing departments, Lenoir said. “We as technical people will say what it will cost but it will be marketing who decides,” he said.

Put the date in your diary now for the inaugural LTE Voice Summit, taking place on October 1st-2nd at the Hilton Paddington, London. Click here NOW to download a flyer.