Comments on: In the Race to LTE, Kineto Talks up Voice

By: Why Is Sprint Rushing a WiMAX Phone to Market? – GigaOM

Why Is Sprint Rushing a WiMAX Phone to Market? – GigaOM — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:28:41 +0000

[...] as importantly, the industry has yet to agree on a handover for voice between 3G and WiMAX which — like LTE — is all-IP. Depending on how Sprint [...]

By: VoIP Gaining Ground, So Where Will Legacy Voice Make Its Last Stand? – GigaOM

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:05:57 +0000

[...] Even though the next-generation Long Term Evolution networks will support voice, it’s still unclear how carriers will manage voice calls over the all-IP LTE network. Plus, the existing 3G and even 2G networks will [...]

By: One Voice Means Your LTE Calls Will One Day Be VoIP

One Voice Means Your LTE Calls Will One Day Be VoIP — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:00:27 +0000

[...] By Stacey Higginbotham | Thursday, November 5, 2009 | 5:00 PM PT | 0 comments | 0 tweets retweet » A large group of carriers and equipment makers yesterday came out in support of a standard called One Voice to provide voice over the next-generation Long Term Evolution mobile networks. For those adopting the standard, LTE mobile calls would become VoIP calls. The standard is necessary to ensure you can call people on 3G networks from a 4G network and across different providers, and reduces the complexity of making that happen. 4G networks are all IP-based, while voice calls are still routed over circuit-switched networks, which could cause communication problems. Figuring out how to deliver circuit-switched calls on a packet network was going to result in compromises and costs I detailed back in April. [...]

By: Slow Wired Broadband Could Choke LTE Femtocells

Slow Wired Broadband Could Choke LTE Femtocells — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:15:25 +0000

[...] which are banking on femtocells. The biggest driver for 4G femtocells may have to do with ensuring voice quality over an all-IP network. If that’s the case, then a 4G femtocell would have to be cheap for consumers, but a [...]

By: Carriers Should Accept That Openness Can Be Good for Them

Carriers Should Accept That Openness Can Be Good for Them — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:17:11 +0000

[...] the data network, but it’s still traveling over AT&T pipes. With LTE (when we get there), voice should all be VoIP because it will travel over an IP network rather than a circuit-switched one. But this isn’t [...]

By: Like Facebook or Google, Wireless Carriers Need to Scale

Like Facebook or Google, Wireless Carriers Need to Scale — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:01:29 +0000

[...] Motorola certainly would love for carriers to start on their all-IP equipment buying sprees, but issues around voice quality and spending on new equipment are one of the biggest [...]

By: anon

anon — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:10:26 +0000

david/peter – agree with you that voice is becoming open. look at skype and google voice. my point is that operators will debate between ims and volga. claim that both allow control, but ims has no services, volga reuses the existing msc, yada yada… meanwhile over the top guys innovate and give new services, while these guys become pipe providers…

i am hoping operators are looking at google and skype, realize the new features etc. they offer and use their network to offer something new at reasonable price points…. volga certainly will not help them do that….

By: David Deans

David Deans — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:52:41 +0000

@Peter makes a good point. With an all-IP 4G broadband network, how voice traffic travels across the network will likely evolve in unpredictable ways. Isn’t that essentially what’s happened with video? I’m not aware of a carrier that factored direct to consumer over-the-top video competition (from their content partners) in their IPTV business planning and infrastructure investment scenario. It really helps to keep an open mind.

By: David Deans

David Deans — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:41:48 +0000

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:40:30 +0000

CS Fallback… Adding a few seconds delay to existing call establishment is a killer. GSM was launched 20 years ago, and now, 20 years later, one would launch a new 4G network which yield worse user experience. That doesn’t sound very attractive.

The future with a data network is not IMS vs the view this article advocates. It is true internet voice. Mobile internet inevitably means voice is going to slip away from operators’ control much like data did. Finally, carriers will become, well, carriers.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:57:47 +0000

well said, sk.

kineto has a decent idea, but imho this is too much. as you said most operators will go for CS fallback. the driver to move to voip/ims has to be services. this is where uma will not help.

btw – ev-do operators have been running in this mode for quite some time now….

anon

By: SK

SK — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:44:04 +0000

The article mentions “carrier(s)”. Well, there is only one carrier that’s T-Mobile which is supporting this concoction of protocols. It is a complete nightmare to implement and has no support within 3GPP. Before going in for an IMS VOIP solution, most operators will go in for CS fallback where the mobile phone uses 2G/3G for voice calls and can prefer LTE for data.

If there are is not much operator support (atleast 3 or 4), this solution will suffer in interoperability cases. For example, a mobile phone that implements Volga will not be able to provide voice support in a roaming scenario.

There is not much hope for this protocol except filling up a few marketing/standards coffers!

By: SS

SS — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:24:12 +0000

Great piece…How is it diff from today – 2G for circuit voice and 3G for IP data …Yes, you need the 2g snd 3g chipsets ..But once LTE is on and its backward compatible, it will have 2G, 3G and LTE..So you can still do 2G voice….They arent gonna have LTE chipsets w/o 2g or 3G compatibility….are they??