On Wednesday July 1, Franz Seiser, T-Mobile Germany’s head of core network technology, will present the company’s views on VoLGA.
You may have seen a snippet of Franz from the LTE World Summit last month in
The webinar will be a good opportunity to understand what problems T-Mobile uncovered with the existing voice over LTE options and why the company is working within the VoLGA Forum to develop a new approach.
See you there.
Today Vodafone announced, during a presentation at the Femtocell World Summit, a new femtocell product for the
Details of the offer a bit sketchy, but according to the Register (and other insiders), the Vodafone Access Gateway will cost t £160 as a one-off price. Alternatively there are bundled options with specific phones which run a monthly fee of £15 – £30. There may also be an option for subscribers with high-tariff packages to receive a femtocell for free.
It’s not clear what subscribers get in return. Most obviously, a femto offers excellent indoor coverage. Perhaps users will also get some type of discounted calling when attached to the femtocell.
Of course,
This leaves T-Mobile and O2/Telefonica as the two operators in the
Nokia’s lack of support for UMA in handsets, exacerbated by the latest research that they are 50% of the market for dual-mode Wi-Fi phones On the other hand, Nokia actively pushes their SIP client in devices, with a table listing devices and discussion framework.
The difference is that UMA/GAN is a technology which route VoIP calls to (and through) the mobile operator.
Whereas SIP is used by everyone but the mobile operator, primarily third party VoIP companies like Fring and Truphone.
Clearly Nokia believes in Mobile VoIP, but just not mobile VoIP for their primary customer base, the mobile operators.
All this got me thinking, why would Nokia work so hard to put SIP into their handsets when SIP isn’t used by any mobile operator today?
There’s a good post on the Voice over LTE blog about the critical need to support SMS with LTE datacards and netbooks. While we often think of SMS as a consumer service, in reality, it was originally developed as an operational control channel for the mobile network to communicate with devices in the field. The lack of a traditional SMS channel in LTE will hamper LTE datacards and netbooks. According to the post, there are many, many operator systems which rely on SMS to provide customer care, management and provisioning messages to the datacards, and the lack of SMS support in LTE is a serious issue.
Look for
There are several articles out today talk about Qualcomm’s new 802.11n chipsets. It appears there is one chip for the home router/gateway market, and a second targeting the embedded handset market. Glenn Fleishman comments that the products are timed right to support multiple HD TV streams in the home. It’s good to see Qualcomm getting aggressive with Wi-Fi.
Having spent a week in Several presentations during the LTE Conference focused on potentially billions of Internet connected devices (GSMA prediction was 50 billion), presumably enabled by low-cost, high speed mobile (LTE) access. The question, or problem, with this scenario is a natural need to separate a subscription from access. I might want my refrigerator on the Internet, but I don’t want to put a SIM in it or have it tied to my mobile service provider.
This is the beauty of Wi-Fi. I pay for a subscription, in the form of DSL service (and presumable LTE in the future), and any device with Wi-Fi/IP connectivity can use it.
Skip ahead to Mi-Fi, a new technology concept pioneered by chip-maker Atheros. The idea is that your mobile phone uses mobile data service (HSPA, LTE) on the WAN, and the Wi-Fi radio on the phone can set up a localized HotSpot. Now Wi-Fi enabled devices within proximity of your phone can get access to the Internet via the mobile broadband subscription.
Very clever.
During my trip to
Do I want water that is ‘still’ or ‘with gas’?
Any time I’m at dinner and that question comes up, everyone glances around the table, wondering who will answer.
Yet on this trip, it was clear some entrepreneur spotted an opportunity in the confusion. For when the waiter saw the puzzled look on our faces, he offered “medium”.
Who new there was lightly carbonated water? A cross between still and sparkling. I wonder if they keep it around just for the Americans.
I’m just back from While IMS remains most operator’s long term voice strategy, it’s clear that a more immediate solution is required. To date a technology called CS Fallback has emerged as the primary ‘competition’ to
Marc Fossier, vice president for Orange/FT Group, articulated the general perception of CS Fallback, when he said in his presentation that “…2G/3G fallback is not a very nice solution, but it could be usable.” That’s a vote of confidence!
Later in the conference, Franz Seiser with T-Mobile presented
For this, T-Mobile has ruled out CS Fallback. After this conference, I suspect other operators will as well.
As the name implies, CS Fallback ‘falls back’ from the LTE network to use the Circuit Services inherent in the 2G and 3G network to make and receive voice calls.
If this sounds counter-intuitive, that’s because it is.
LTE is the fastest, lowest cost access mobile access network the world has ever developed. Why would an operator deploy LTE and then *not* put its primary revenue generating service (voice) on it? Even worse: devise a system that forces users back to the previous network. It doesn’t make any sense.
With CS Fallback there are implications on the user experience with LTE. First, there is undoubtedly an additional delay in making a phone call. Switching networks takes time, and that’s added time the user is waiting to make or receive a phone call.
Switching networks is also when call drops tend to happen. So when’s the best time to hand over to another network? The exact moment the user knows they have a call coming in? Probably not.
Next, the phone needs to stop what it is doing on LTE (streaming a video? Internet radio? …) and re-connect to the 2G or 3G network. As a user, you need to decide to cancel your data session to answer the phone. Not exactly ideal if you bought the phone for high speed data. The data session may be able to hand back to the 3G network, but certainly all is lost if the phone falls back to 2G.
Thinking of using LTE for combinatorial services (voice and video)? Good luck. No voice, no combinatorial services on LTE. Everything will have to be on 3G.
Then there is the cost. To support CS Fallback, a new interface must be developed on the MSC. If there’s one thing mobile operators don’t want to do, it’s change the MSC. Not only are MSC upgrades expensive, they require a fair bit of testing and validation. The MSC is the heart of the core voice service so any change is approached cautiously.
As an interim solution, it’s clear that CS Fallback falls short.
Congratulations, Orange! Orange continues its successful service. The company’s Unik (UMA-based) service was awarded Best WiFi Product or Service from Wireless Broadband Innovation (WBI).
The VoLGA-Forum continues its quiet preparation. Late last week on its site, the group published a draft of the Stage 2 / Architecture specifications.
The ‘skype-hype’ is reaching a new level, and for good reason. By some accounts, Skype (through Skype Out or point to point) now accounts for 30% of the massive international calling market today.
And now VoIP is going mobile. Gartner just released a report suggesting that in the next 10 years, more than half of mobile voice traffic will be VoIP based, with much of that enabled through the introduction of LTE. It seems to me that launching an LTE service without voice is inviting mobile VoIP into your network.
This is why the voice over LTE ‘problem’ is so critical for mobile operators, and why more and more operators are investigating VoLGA.
In addition,
From the beginning, the power of the UMA/GAN specification has been to extend the mobile operator’s core service to the internet. Now more than ever, mobile operators are turning to UMA/GAN to solve this problem.
As reported by Xchange magazine just a few minutes ago, T-Mobile is making some significant changes to its enterprise service offer.
First, enterprises with 100 or more lines of service from T-Mobile can receive free nationwide Wi-Fi calling with UMA-enabled Blackberries. No more $10/month for service.
In addition, T-Mobile is adding Research In Motion’s MVS product to its portfolio. MVS extends the PBX desk phone to Blackberries.
This is a significant step towards FMS in the enterprise. Employees can get a UMA-enabled Blackberry and receive free unlimited calling in
I'm sure the Yankee Group, who recently published a story about their move to enteprise UMA, is happy to hear about this development.
It looks like Enteprise UMA is picking up.
All good questions, but the answer is not quite so mysterious. VoIP service providers have been and continue to be a key source of competition for operators. Some, like 3 UK, have chosen to give up their voice service to Skype, while others are using UMA to combat mobile VoIP.
A few weeks back, Sonus Networks announced that it had joined the VoLGA Forum. Keen UMA Today readers recall that the VoLGA is a voice over LTE technology based on the existing 3GPP GAN standards.
Joining a forum isn't that exciting, but there was a nugget in the release that I missed. In the announcement, Sonus actually announced that it’s MobilEdge product (part of its MobilEvolution strategy) can be used as a VoLGA Access Network Controller, or VAN-Controller.
Sonus MobilEvolution architecture supports joint interworking of packet and circuit-switched network elements, enabling mobile network operators to initially combine a circuit-switched core network for legacy services with an IP-based access and core network for multimedia services. The Sonus MobilEdge can be used as a VANC (VoLGA Access Network Controller) as defined through the
I believe this is the first confirmed product announcement supporting
One of my favorite topics is AT&T and their Wi-Fi opportunity. AT&T has quickly become the largest Wi-Fi provider in the FierceWireless reported that AT&T’s connections at its 20,000+ hotspot network were 10.5m for Q1 2009. That’s up from 3.4 million connections in Q1 2008.
Where are all these new connections coming from? Laptops? Maybe, AT&T does offer free Wi-Fi hotspot access to AT&T DSL subscribers as well as 3G/HSPA subscribers.
But more likely is that this was from iPhones, which now receive free Wi-Fi access hotspots.
It would be so easy to add UMA to all those Wi-Fi enabled devices…
“…Orange and T-Mobile and [now] Rogers Wireless are driving the UMA market and do not plan to slow down their deployments; in fact, they see the slowdown as an opportunity to lure more FMC subscribers."
Infonetics also reported:
beginning to dream about it.
Yankee Group decided to take control of its disparate wireless plans and selected T-Mobile's service, with one of the key advantages being the potential for cost savings with using Wi-Fi, particularly during international travel (the other being coverage on the 27th floor of the Prudential Tower in Boston).It’s just like I’ve been saying.Beware of international calling and international roaming charges, Yankee Group recommends. “These charges can be enormous. Use Wi-Fi whenever possible.”
