Telecom Lead India: Anite, a supplier of wireless device
testing technology, is all prepared to address the testing demands for Voice
over LTE (VoLTE) that are growing with the global roll-outs of VoLTE services.

 

The company supplies mobile device and network testing
systems for the wireless market. Additionally, the company also provides
reservation and e-commerce solutions for the travel market.

 

Paul Beaver, products director at Anite’s Handset Testing
Business, talks about Anite’s lab-based testing for VoLTE implementations,
along with trends and challenges for the VoLTE market. Responsible for Anite’s
3GPP business, Beaver also highlights Anite’s investment and expansion plans:
 

 

What is the importance of VoLTE’s commercial success in
supporting the development of LTE? 

VoLTE’s commercial success is most likely going to be
played out over a number of years; as operators are going to need some time in
order to work out the best way of monetising VoLTE services. In the short term,
however, it is more important to LTE’s general development that any launched
VoLTE service is both robust and can deliver high levels of quality. There is no
industry consensus as to the best way of monetising VoLTE services; so the
short term priority is undoubtedly to ensure that the technology is up to the
required standard.

 

How lab-based testing can help ensure seamless
interoperability of evolving VoLTE implementations?

At an early stage, it is quite likely that each
operator’s respective VoLTE implementations will have their own unique set of
characteristics. Lab-based testing can help to ensure that devices will
seamlessly interoperate by mirroring these characteristics within a simulated
network environment. By testing devices against a wide range of potential
network configurations, operators and device manufacturers can ensure that
consumers are provided with the level of service quality that they expect.

Initially, it is likely that VoLTE service will only be
optimised for use on the consumer’s home network and may not seamlessly work
when roaming onto other networks. However, full network roaming capability will
need to be enabled eventually. The diverse range of VoLTE interpretations among
operators means that testing devices for interoperability in the lab is of
critical importance in achieving this aim.

 

What are your solutions for VoLTE testing?

For VoLTE testing, Anite has implemented our own IP
Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) simulation within our test solutions. We have taken
this decision, when many other vendors have chosen to work with third party
providers, because we believe that it is important for chipset and UE
manufacturers to have a solution adhering to an independent interpretation of
the standards. This is also a more cost effective and flexible approach,
enabling Anite to maintain control when it comes to defining the future product
road map.

Our VoLTE testing solution comprises integrated LTE
protocol VoLTE performance optimisation features such as TTI Bundling, Semi
Persistent Scheduling (SPS), Robust Header Compression (RoHC) and Discontinuous
Reception (DRX.) These underlying VoLTE enablers are vital in ensuring the QoS
for VoLTE calls.Anite’s expertise and leadership in protocol testing is
unrivalled, and our solution allows us to use this knowledge to good effect in
our VoLTE solution.

 

How voice-over LTE (VoLTE) can help operators in ensuring
a ROI?

Ultimately, LTE offers a lower operating cost than a
Circuit Switched network does. In theory, therefore, if an operator were to
migrate all of their traffic onto an LTE network, their operating costs would
be reduced pro-rata. The delivery of voice services over an IP based LTE network
will be cheaper in the long run. For many operators there is a commercial
incentive to redeploy some of their network assets to LTE.

What is the current state of market readiness for VoLTE
devices and when VoLTE may become a market reality?

 

It is undoubtedly early days for VoLTE. South Korean
operator SKT has recently announced that it plans to roll out a commercial
VoLTE service in September 2012; while MetroPCS has announced the deployment of
a commercial VoLTE service in the U.S. market. VoLTE services will undoubtedly
continue to appear in some form throughout the latter half of this year.
However, we are unlikely to see a full scale commercial service rolled out
across multiple networks until at least 2014.

What are the trends in the LTE market, particularly for
voice-over LTE (VoLTE)?

Generally speaking, there is a strong industry consensus
that VoLTE is the model that will be deployed to deliver voice. An emerging
trend that we are also currently witnessing is that TD-LTE, whilst remaining
complimentary to FDD-LTE, is gaining an ever more central role in the delivery
of LTE services. A further trend that we are observing is that international
operators are displaying an increased interest in carrier aggregation as a
means to increase bandwidth.

What are the challenges and opportunities in the market?

One challenge that exists for operators is how to
generate revenue from VoLTE. Potentially, operators may be able to tier their
service offering, with customers paying more for a higher quality of service.
However, the offering of a tiered service often tends to spark a wider debate
regarding network neutrality. Equally, in order to compete with OTT players,
such as Skype, and maintain their position as the premier providers of voice services,
operators need to be absolutely certain that VoLTE is capable of delivering a
carrier grade quality of service. Ensuring quality of service is undoubtedly
the biggest challenge faced by operators in terms of VoLTE at the present time.

 

What are your investment and expansion plans globally and
for the Asian market?

 

Due to Anite’s test case coverage, the world’s major
device and chipset manufacturers depend on our solutions to pre-qualify and
certify their products. However, as a company, Anite is always looking to grow
and explore new opportunities within a range of global markets and has invested
heavily in TD-LTE.

 

Working with ZTE, Anite has recently proven the first
TD-LTE/TD-SCDMA Inter-Radio Access Technology (RAT) conformance test cases. By
developing these test cases, Anite has been able to accelerate the maturity of
devices and provide a roadmap for the start of formal conformance testing prior
to commercial network launches.

 

Danish Khan
[email protected]