Using Policy to Deliver High Definition Voice Services

VoLTEUsing Policy to Deliver High Definition Voice Services

The continued roll out and growth of LTE places operators’ plans for voice services increasingly in the spotlight. Providing data services on one network and voice services on older circuit switched networks, may not make best use of scarce resources. LTE provides lower cost of ownership over older networks, so consolidating data and voice services on LTE makes financial sense. It can also deliver customers a better service experience and enable operators to be better equipped to compete against OTT VoIP and messaging providers. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) enables operators to consolidate network expenses, provide much more efficient use of spectrum, and deliver a wider range of services for their customers.

While the initial function of VoLTE is voice services, as it’s based on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), it enables operators to deliver many more services, such as Rich Communications Suite (RCS) offers including messaging and video calling. These can be offered and bundled with voice services that can be easily used by the operators’ subscribers.

As VoLTE is delivered as a voice service over a data network, it will require control and delivery capabilities that, while used extensively in data services, were not required in traditional circuit switched voice networks. One of the main control and delivery functions needed by VoLTE will be policy management to ensure the consistent and quality delivery of a High Definition (HD) voice service.

VoLTE—The New Voice (that’s Data)

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The Growth of HD Voice and LTE

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There is already a fast expanding market for HD voice. As of March 2014, 100 mobile operators in 71 countries offer HD voice services. While most of these are on 3G HSPA, a number are VoLTE. This is increasing. In May 2014 alone leading operators such as AT&T, SingTel and T-Mobile US launched HD voice services using VoLTE. Many other tier one operators are looking to launch VoLTE in the near future, taking advantage of the success of LTE.

The rate of growth of LTE continues unsurpassed: by May 2014 there were 288 live LTE networks in 104 countries. The GSA forecast that this will increase to over 350 live LTE networks by the end of 2014. The number of LTE subscribers is also growing fast with an estimated 240M LTE subscriptions in Q1 2014, (up from 157.7M in Q3 2013).*

* Source—GSA, Global Mobile Broadband Market Update, May 2014

There is a strong demand from operators to roll out VoLTE. In August 2013 Openet surveyed over 80 mobile operators—71% said that they were looking to introduce VoLTE services.* This number is backed up by research from leading research firm telecoms.com intelligence who ran a survey asking mobile operators how long after a commercial launch of LTE would they start to provide VoLTE services. The answers showed that 34% expect to see VoLTE launched commercially between 12-24 months after initial LTE launch while almost 19% expect a timescale of 6 months or less and over 27% see 6-12 months.

Looking ahead, Infonetics projects the number of VoLTE subscribers to grow at a 145% compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2017 and ARCchart forecasts that VoLTE subscriptions will represent 10% of all LTE subscribers by 2016. No matter which way you look at the numbers, LTE is enjoying massive adoption and it makes commercial sense for operators to leverage this to provide HD voice services to their LTE customers using VoLTE.

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VoLTE Roll Out and Growth Forecasts

Source - Telecoms.com Intelligence Voice over LTE survey, January 2013* Source: Openet Survey—Charging and Billing in the Digital Economy, August 2013

Enabling QoS in VoLTETraditionally policy management has been a preserve of data services. But as VoLTE is a voice service enabled by IMS, advanced policy management is needed. In order to deliver HD voice services, the policy management system needs to dynamically manage unpredictable mobile resources associated with each VoLTE call. Policy is essential to manage the quality of service (QoS) of every VoLTE call, as the quality needs to be better than low-cost or free over-the-top services.

With VoLTE, delivering QoS is not just limited to voice. Rich communication services such as video messaging also need to be managed. Just like the HD voice services, these messaging services need to have policy to dynamically manage every call and session.

Policy—Delivering Quality on Every VoLTE Call

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VoLTE - System Performance and Virtualization

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Supplementing LTE with Existing Circuit Switched NetworksOne of the components of rolling out a VoLTE service is the ability to use the existing circuit switched network when LTE coverage is not available. Circuit switched fall back (CSFB) is important so that operators can launch a VoLTE service even if they don’t have full national LTE coverage, and rely on existing circuit switched networks to handle calls when a customer goes outside an area of LTE coverage. This handover from LTE to 3G will add to the large number of call records that VoLTE will generate. This can place additional pressure on the business support systems (BSS) used to collect, rate, dynamically manage and charge for VoLTE calls. It’s therefore important that BSS for VoLTE (and all LTE based traffic) can provide cost effective, very high performance transaction management.

VoLTE—Driving the Economics for Virtualized PolicyTo commercially deploy VoLTE, the policy solution needs to scale to handle a dramatic rise in transactions per second (TPS) rates and network signaling. VoLTE requires all subscribers to have a permanent data bearer channel available together with the signaling associated with the IMS application function. This will drive the requirement for additional hardware and add to the cost of providing the systems to enable delivery of VoLTE.

Virtualization of policy management is critical to meeting this scaling requirement in a cost effective manner.

The main marketing message for HD voice call on VoLTE is quality. Operators are stressing improved call quality and faster set up times, and are pricing VoLTE HD voice calls the same as traditional voice, thus encouraging VoLTE adoption and usage. AT&TAT&T’s HD voice service uses VoLTE and the marketing messages are very much on call quality. By making comparisons between standard television and HD TV, AT&T is giving consumers an easy to understand benchmark for understanding what HD voice delivers. As well as call quality AT&T HD voice provides ‘simultaneous voice and data at 4G LTE speeds’. AT&T HD Voice is priced the same as normal voice calls. SingTelSingTel’s 4G Clearvoice HD voice service also promotes call quality as its main marketing message. However, they do promote faster call set up times (ranging from 0.25 to 2 seconds). They also point out that 4G HD voice calls are priced the same as traditional voice calls on 3G and that no data charges will be incurred for 4G voice calls. T-MobileAvailable initially in the Seattle market, T- Mobile US’ VoLTE HD voice service promotes seamless handover (no dropped calls) between IP and circuit switched networks, as well as the voice quality and fast call set messages. In addition T-Mobile says that launching VoLTE is their ‘first step toward a host of rich communication services’.

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Existing VoLTE Offers

Existing VoLTE Offers

SK Telecom South Korea Telecom launched VoLTE in August 2012 and by November 2013 had more than 8 million customers using VoLTE. *

Using the brand of ‘HD Voice’ SK Telecom see VoLTE as an opportunity to better compete with OTT and VoIP services and deliver a superior voice service for customers. According to SK Telecom VoLTE dramatically improves audio quality (able to handle 2.2 times wider frequency bandwidth as 3G voice) and has much improved call setup times which range from 0.25 to 2.5 seconds on LTE, compared with a five second setup time on 3G.

LG U+ Korean mobile operator LG U+ is promoting 100% LTE which means that all voice calls are pure LTE—in other words no circuit switched fallback on LG U+ network. In September 2013, LG U+ CEO said “call success rates on 100% LTE is as high as 99.89 percent”. They have emphasized that there is no need for a 3G network to back up LTE and that 100% LTE also uses less battery power. **

Since launching LTE and its associated services, all operators in South Korea have seen an increase in ARPU.*

*Source—GSA HD Voice January 2014. **Source—Korea Joongang Daily, August 2013

VoLTE

THE FUTURE IS CALLING

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Openet’s Policy Manager provides a standards compliant (3GPP and GSMA VoLTE) solution that enables the easy configuration of policies related to IMS applications and QoS profile from a central decision core. Once Policy Manager is configured, IMS applications can be enabled through a single decision core command which greatly simplifies the deployment process. Openet’s Policy Manager for VoLTE can be implemented as part of a larger policy solution from Openet, or as separate VoLTE / IMS policy solution for operators who have invested in other policy solutions. Openet’s Policy Manager provides proven tier 1 performance in a virtualized environment.

Openet’s VoLTE Solution

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Openet software enables the world’s largest network operators to innovate service offerings in an increasingly mobile, data-driven society.

More than ten years ago, we entered the telecommunications industry with high performance software that enabled network operators to more efficiently and flexibly harness the “big data” generated across large, heterogenous networks. Our performance innovations still lead the industry, easily processing more than 10 billion daily network transaction records at a single network operator.

Openet software quickly evolved to support real-time network interaction, including online charging as well as policy and charging control (PCRF). The largest operators in the world rely on our software to enable services that vary according to network speed, consumption allowances, service access, and/or dynamic pricing. Analysts recognize us as the global leader of policy and charging control solutions by both revenue and mindshare.

Today Openet technology extends from the network core to the mobile device. Our products represent an integrated suite of industry leading charging, policy, data management, and interaction capabilities. Together, these represent a powerful platform for service innovation in a dynamic, connected world.

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Learn More About Openet’s VoLTE Solution