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The P3 U.S. Public Benchmark
2015 tested VoLTE service
against legacy voice imple-mentaons with a clear out-
come: VoLTE is ready for eve-
ryday use and signicantly
improves the customer expe-
rience. Using the latest high-
tech measurement equip-
ment, P3 tested the voice
services of all four U.S. wire-
less networks in the Wash-ington, D.C. metro area with
a primary focus on compar-
ing the newest VoLTE serv-
ices to legacy voice services.
The test cases were designed
to reect average customerbehavior and were all based
on proven P3 measurement
methodologies.
Results show that the three
exisng U.S. VoLTE deploy-
ments in Washington, D.C.
provide signicant improve-
ments over the legacy voice
services and are reasonablyreliable. Sprint has yet to an-
nounce its VoLTE plans. With
sucient LTE coverage and
during VoLTE calls on the
same carrier, the user experi-
ence improves dramacally.Overall, VoLTE channel call
setup success and call drop
raos also were on an im-
pressive level for such a new
technology.
In addion, all U.S. carriers
sll have to implement VoLTE
calling across networks and
VoLTE roaming, to broadenthe number of customers
who benet from these im-
provements.
The P3 U.S. PublicBenchmark 2015
In the rst independent public benchmark of Voice over LTE services in the
U.S., P3 measurements conrm that VoLTE brings signicant improvementsover exisng legacy circuit switched voice services, delivering crystal clearvoice quality, ultra-fast connecon setup and paving the way for futurerich communicaons services. Moreover, with VoLTE, U.S. carriers havesuccessfully leapfrogged the world’s best state-of-the-art networks in termsof voice quality and call setup speeds.
2
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Thus, the U.S. is a prime area of focus for
P3 communicaons, an internaonal
leader in mobile benchmarking. This
P3 U.S. Public Benchmark 2015 isdesigned to provide a clear, objecve
and technically sound overview of
current VoLTE network performance.
It highlights the carriers’ leading-
edge VoLTE innovaons and reveals
potenal weak spots in wireless
service quality as perceived by
customers. P3’s holisc approach
to mobile network benchmarking
and opmizaon has helped shape
the wireless customer experience
around the world. In the last year,
P3 performed network tesng and
opmizaon projects in over 42
countries, including Australia, India,
Qatar and the U.S..
P3 has performed annual public
benchmarks in Germany since 2002
and in Austria and Switzerland since
2009. Australia and the UK were
added in 2014, and P3 is expanding
its measurements to addional
countries in 2015 and 2016. In
parallel, P3 is currently rolling out a
crowd sourcing soluon to provide
superior network insights around
the globe. P3 plans to perform a
naonwide U.S. Public Benchmark in
the rst half of 2016.
In Germany, Austria and Switzerland,
P3’s annual benchmark is widely
accepted as the most objecve
and thorough test of network
performance, drawing on hundreds
of thousands of voice and data
measurements. It has signicantly
improved market transparency
regarding measurement and
comparison of network quality.
U.S. wireless carriers have deployed
and operated 4G LTE technology
across large porons of their networks
since 2010; LTE-capable smartphones
are now available everywhere and
dominate handset sales. In the second
half of 2014, VoLTE was introduced
by three of the four Tier-1 carriers in
select markets across the country.
But VoLTE is not yet the default
technology used for voice calls; today
many customers with VoLTE capable
phones must opt-in to this technology
(see page 6). Thus, the legacy circuit
switched voice service sll has a
dominant impact on the wireless
customer experience. Implemenng
good legacy voice service is sll a
parcular challenge for the carriers
when smartphones are not VoLTE-
capable and use LTE for data. For
each phone call non-VoLTE devices
have to switch back to legacy voice
network standards like UMTS or
CDMA. To do so, a device must rst
detect a legacy voice network and
then switch to it. This process, called
Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB), can
lengthen call setup mes and increase
the possibility of failure. When VoLTE
is used to make voice calls, this
complicated CSFB procedure is not
necessary. VoLTE-enabled devices
remain on the 4G LTE network to
iniate voice calls. The challenge
for VoLTE is that an established and
ongoing voice call must either remain
on the 4G LTE network for the duraon
of the call, or seamlessly be handed
o to the legacy 2G or 3G networks
when moving out of 4G LTE coverage.
For these reasons, the P3 U.S. Public
Benchmark 2015 was conducted
using advanced VoLTE-capable 4G LTE
devices and compared legacy circuit-
switched and VoLTE technologies.
Introducon
Background
3
P3 selected Washington, D.C. because it represents a
level playing eld in terms of the spectrum availableto all carriers and VoLTE deployment. In addion, the
results can be compared to P3’s measurements in capital
cies around the world.
P3’s benchmark was de-
signed to test whether or
not VoLTE implementaons
are providing the stable
and high quality service
promised and the level ofimprovement over legacy
services.
The U.S. is the largest and most advanced mobile communicaons market in the world. Leading U.S. carriers already
operate some of the newest 4G LTE technologies and are moving very quickly to deploy them naonwide.
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The benchmark results are based on
two weeks of intensive tesng. Two
specially-equipped measurement
vehicles took thousands of test sam-
ples while travelling throughout the
Washington, D.C. metro area on andinside the Capital Beltway (I-495).
To ensure fair compeon between
carriers, each company was informed
several weeks in advance about test
methodologies, the main focus of the
test cases, the target area and the
test period. It was up to each carrier
to decide if and how to best prepare
for the test.
At the same me, the P3 benchmark
was designed to be strictly indepen-
dent and imparal. The nal say for
the test design, the routes and the
results interpretaon was P3’s. And,
needless to say, the carriers had ab-
solutely no inuence over the nal
results. Performance assessment for
the P3 U.S. Public Benchmark 2015
was based on P3’s extensive world-wide network measurement and op-
mizaon experience.
P3 communicaons has well over a
decade of experience in network test-
ing of this type. P3 works with clients
around the world including wireless
network carriers, device manufactur-
ers and regulatory authories.
ApproachIn 2014 alone,
P3’s test vehicles
covered morethan 620,000
miles and
compiled more
than 40,000
measurementhours in 42
countries across
5 connents.
The route covered the dense downtown area of the
naon’s capital, as well as the quiet residenal parts of
Washington, D.C. to provide the most representave
data possible.
4
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Timeline 2015
About P3 communicaonsP3 communicaons is a leading internaonal consulng, engineering
and tesng services company. P3 communicaons is part of the
P3 group, which has over 2,700 employees worldwide and posted a
turnover of more than $320 million in 2014.
The company provides a broad porolio of independent technical
and management consulng services including network planning,
engineering, end-to-end opmizaon, security, QoS and QoE tesng,
internaonal benchmarking, device tesng and acceptance services.
P3 communicaons’ clients include network operators, equipment
vendors, device manufacturers, public safety organizaons and
regulatory authories around the world; the company’s own experts
combine strong technical know-how with many years of management
experience.
5
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L T
6
Today’s wireless carriers are
connually challenged to keep up
with the explosion of wireless data
trac, rst seen in xed networks.
Demand for wireless data quickly
outpaced the capabilies of 2G and3G networks and was the main driver
behind the development of 4G LTE
technology. The inial role of 4G
LTE was to ooad data trac from
the legacy networks and provide
customers with a superior data
experience, which worked well unl
now and will further improve in the
next years. It also promised to make
more ecient use of expensive
wireless spectrum, unlock new and
untapped spectrum, simplify network
infrastructure and provide a clear
path for future innovaon.
However, one piece was sorely
missing to really enable the carriers
to start replacing their legacy
infrastructure with LTE and LTE-
Advanced technology: the basic voice
call was not possible over LTE.
This started to change with theavailability of Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE)
technology. VoLTE uses 4G LTE
networks to carry voice calls instead of
the legacy 2G or 3G networks. Based
on the same Voice-over-IP technology
already long used by the Internet’s
xed IP connecons, VoLTE makes
use of the packet data bearer instead
of the legacy circuit switched bearer.
Well-funconing VoLTE service allows
carriers to re-purpose (“re-farm”)
valuable wireless spectrum currently
used less eciently by legacy 2G and
3G technology. Moreover, moving
voice calls to the more ecient 4GLTE technology, will allow carriers
to phase out 2G and 3G networks
over me, further simplifying
network infrastructure and handset
complexity.
For consumers, VoLTE comes with
a promise of “high denion” call
quality with higher delity voice
signals and wider audio spectrum.
Consumers who experience HD voiceservice by placing VoLTE-to-VoLTE calls
within the same carrier are amazed
by the clarity of the voice connecon,
asking “How close are you?” Other
VoLTE
With nearly 400
commercial LTE
networks in operaon
worldwide, 4G LTE has
been very successful in
complemenng exisng
legacy 2G and 3G
networks.
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benets include typically shorter call
setup mes and the future promise of
rich communicaons services (RCS)
such as video calling.
VoLTE is just the rst step into a
new world of communicang. Theunderlying IP Mulmedia Subsystem
(IMS) technology allows video chat
and a wide range of completely
new services and features including
handover or ooading to WiFi
networks.
The VoLTE revoluon has just begun.
As of April 2015, only 16 commercial
VoLTE services had been launched
worldwide. The vast majority of VoLTEdeployments are in South-East Asia,
while three are in the United States –
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.
These three U.S. carries completed
“so” launches of VoLTE in the third
quarter of 2014; carrier promoon
of the service has been minimal to
date and many customers with VoLTE
capable phones must acvate this
feature manually.
Prerequisites for VoLTE are either
good conguous 4G LTE coverageor a methodology to handover an
ongoing VoLTE call from 4G LTE to the
circuit switched legacy service when
the handset leaves 4G LTE coverage.
This is one reason why carriers like
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon invested
heavily in the deployment of 4G LTE
infrastructure.
VoLTE now has been in operaon for
more than six months, which is a very
long me in the fast-paced wireless
industry. In this rst public benchmarkto include VoLTE measurements, we
looked at how this new service stacks
up against legacy technology and if
it is delivering on its core promises
of beer voice quality and faster call
setup mes.
Verizon Wireless launched
VoLTE naonwide on Day
One, while AT&T and
T-Mobile launched in a
few markets and added
markets over me.
Is VoLTE
ready toreplace
legacy
voiceservice
and
becomethe new
default
choicefor voice
calls?
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The basis for the benchmark was the proven P3 measurement
methodology, used by the company for similar tesng around
the world. It is connuously adapted to the latest state-of-the
art technologies and services. The methodology ensures a
fair comparison of results between all networks tested,
and yields reliable outcomes. Addionally, it enables a
worldwide comparison of network performance.
Methodology
SmartphonesEvery year P3 reviews and decides
which measurement device will be
used for the upcoming tests.
The selected smartphone must meet
a detailed set of requirements. It is
very important that it be widely used
in the target market to ensure the
benchmark results are representave
of the customer experience; P3 only
considers market-leading devices.
The test smartphones also must
accommodate installaon of all
necessary measurement soware,
making an Android operang
system mandatory. Special local
requirements are reected by using
local versions of the device and, if
available, carrier specic rmware.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE Cat 4
was selected for the P3 U.S. Public
Benchmark 2015. This device is based
on the well-established Qualcomm
Snapdragon 801 chipset, supports
VoLTE and download-speeds up to
150Mbit/s.
T-Mobile and Sprint device versions
support circuit switched voice calling
with wideband codecs. The
AT&T device version used Carrier
Aggregaon during the benchmark.
The Sprint device version does not
support VoLTE.
It was ensured that any fair use
policies, somemes used to control
data download speeds for customers
with very high data usage, did notinterfere with the test results. For
the VoLTE measurement phones, P3
opted in to the carriers’ VoLTE services
and enabled it on the phones.
Inuence of MeasurementDevices on the ResultsVoLTE is a fairly new technology not
only for the carriers and network
infrastructure providers, but also for
device manufacturers, which had to
build in this completely new way ofmaking phone calls.
In addion, compared to the highly
mature legacy voice technologies,
VoLTE network protocols demand
greater interacon between the
network and the device. At this early
stage of VoLTE maturity, the inuence
of the smartphones used can be
signicant; dierent smartphones
can yield dierent results. The goal
of this benchmark is to compare the
new VoLTE service against the legacy
voice service as a whole, which can
be reasonably accomplished with a
single measurement device. For an
accurate comparison of individual
carrier VoLTE implementaons,
however, more mature VoLTE
smartphones will be required.
To duplicate the
customer experience, P3
anonymously purchased
the SIM cards, voice and
data plans from normal
retail outlets.
All smartphones were
mounted in a proprietary
antenna aenuaonbox inside the vehicles
to ensure proper test
condions with added
signal aenuaon to
reect a balance of real-
world condions.
ant nuatr
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Measurement SystemEach measurement vehicle was
equipped with P3’s custom-built
proprietary high-end measurement
systems that provide real-world
condions ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ one legacy voice, one
VoLTE voice (except for Sprint) and
one data test smartphone per carrier.
All voice test calls were mobile to
mobile, and set up from one car tothe other. Voice measurements were
taken while the cars were moving.
One pair of smartphones per carrier
was congured to preferably use
VoLTE between cars where available
and legacy (or mixed) voice where
VoLTE was not (connuously)
available. The other pair was set up to
always use the legacy circuit switched
implementaon between cars. One
of the legacy voice devices was
congured for LTE preferred mode
for data, which forced the networks
to employ Circuit Switched Fallback
(CSFB) if the device was in a 4G area.
Voice calls in 3G-only or 2G-only
coverage areas were operated
as usual. To simulate typical user
behavior, voice measurements were
conducted while the test devices
were handling small amounts of data
trac at the same me – in this case,
by receiving emails.Speech quality was evaluated
using the Perceptual Objecve
Listening Quality Analysis (ITU-T
P.863 POLQA) wideband algorithm.
POLQA-Wideband has become an
important measurement standard
for next-generaon networks, as
carriers deploy high-denion
voice services and oer compable
handsets. It delivers an advanced
level of benchmarking accuracy and
adds signicant new capabilies forwideband and super-wideband (HD)
voice signals, along with support for
the most recent voice coding and
VoIP transmission technologies.
Besides speech quality, key
performance metrics included call
setup mes, call setup success raos
and call drop raos.
1,300miles
50,000speech samples
140GB data
2test vans 7,000voice calls
Logiscs and RoutesThe tesng was conducted on and
inside the Washington, D.C. Capital
Beltway (I-495). The test vehicles
drove dierent routes within
Washington, D.C. to maximize the
area covered. To prevent the risk of
one car distorng the measurements
of the other, the drivers avoided
traveling in the same exact areas
at the same me. In total, the test
vehicles covered more than 1,300
miles. Across all services combined
on all networks, they conducted
roughly 7,000 voice calls with more
than 50,000 speech samples. In all,
more than 140 Gigabytes of data
were transferred.
Washington
Arlington
Bethesda Silver Spring
Hyasville
Annandale
Alexandria
I-495
Washington, D.C. Capital Beltway
Tesng route
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ResultsIn order to see how VoLTE performs compared to the legacy voice service, we looked at both technologies independently
and compared the results. The big queson: Is VoLTE delivering on its promise?
VoLTE service on all three carrier networks and with the selected measurement device showed acceptable results in
connecng and holding VoLTE calls (availability and retainability) comparable to the legacy services. The P3 benchmark
focused on the core VoLTE promises of improved call setup mes and voice quality.
Not all call aempts of the “VoLTE
preferred” devices actually ended up
as VoLTE-to-VoLTE calls.
The other call aempts were set up
either as pure legacy calls, with only
one side on VoLTE and the other side
on legacy, failed to connect or med
out.
The measurement system was
congured to classify call aempts asmed-out if they take longer than 20
seconds to connect. This is plenty of
me for a pure VoLTE call.
Overall, the VoLTE channel call
setup success raos were on an
acceptable level with slight room for
improvement.
Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) is a
mechanism that helps when there is a
need to place a legacy voice call with
a device that is currently camping or
transferring data on the LTE network.
This can be the case either because
the device is not VoLTE enabled or
for some other reason VoLTE is not
available to set up the call. The device
thus needs to hand down to and
register in the legacy network and
then proceed with the call setup.Verizon Wireless doesn’t need this
mechanism because their devices
are registered in both LTE and legacy
network at the same me. This
increases device complexity, but
simplies the network infrastructure
and removes a potenal point of
failure. How does CSFB perform for
AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile?
The porons of call
aempts of the VoLTE-
preferred channels that did
not connect within the rst
20 seconds were between
0.50 and 1.09%.
Of all aempted calls
on the VoLTE-preferred
channels, the shares of
connected calls using
VoLTE technology on both
ends were between 97.3%
and 97.8%.
VoLTE Channel Call Setup Circuit Switched Fallback
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CSFB for legacy devices
One legacy measurement device
was congured to prefer LTE for data
transmission, forcing it to employ
CSFB to place or receive a legacy voice
call, while the other was set to prefer
3G data technology, circumvenng
the need for CSFB. The below table
shows the CSFB success rao and theaverage and maximum me it took
to perform the CSFB procedures. It’s
interesng to see that both for Sprint
and T-Mobile, we observed a few
very long CSFB procedure duraons,
which can be problemac because
the device cannot be reached by
the network during that me, and
indicates a potenal for opmizaon.
The CSFB success raos and duraonsare comparable to other carriers
around the globe.
CSFB for VoLTE devices
The AT&T VoLTE measurement
phones only performed one CSFB
procedure to place a call. The CSFB
succeeded and the procedure took
only 0.68 seconds. For the T-Mobile
VoLTE channel, we measured 30 CSFB
aempts, 16 on the calling and 14 on
the receiving side. On average, theprocedure took 3.91 seconds, and
one CSFB aempt failed, resulng in
an unsuccessful call setup.
Carrier CSFB success raoAverage CSFB
duraonMaximum CSFB
duraon
AT&T 98.67% 1.57s 5.13s
Sprint 98.91% 2.19s 10.52s
T-Mobile 99.7% 1.45s 14.45s
Call setup me is the me it takes
between dialing a call on the calling
party and the ringing on the calledparty. Legacy networks – especially
when using mechanisms like CSFB
– typically have call setup mes
between 5 and 15 seconds, and
somemes even longer. A short
call setup me is desirable because
customers may abandon the call
aempt if it is too long.
The legacy voice implementaons
showed average call setup mes
between 6.1 and 7.8 secondsbut quite a few were longer than
15 seconds. VoLTE shows an
impressive improvement for all
three VoLTE carriers, especially
AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile is
slightly slower but sll with very
good results.
Call Setup Time Improvements7
.0 0
2.10
7 .0 1
3.8 4
6 .1 6
7 .8 0
2.50
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
Verizon
Call setup me: legacy VoLTE preferred
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The POLQA algorithm was not the only conrmaon of the improvements that VoLTE brings to speech quality. Also
when comparing the spectral densies of the recorded speech sample for the dierent technologies under good radiocondions, the diagrams clearly show that the received VoLTE sample contains much higher frequencies than the
recorded legacy sample. This does not only result in a higher MOS score, but in beer voice clarity and experience for
customers. New VoLTE users oen are surprised to hear the dierence, asking “How close are you?”
P3 engineers also examined which wideband voice codecs predominated in each VoLTE implementaon. Even though
T-Mobile focuses on the higher bitrate voice codec (23.85 kbit/s), the voice quality results are more or less the same as
for AT&T and Verizon who use a 12.65 kbit/s codec.
Voice quality was measured by
playing reference samples on
the “talking” side and recording
the transmied samples on the
“listening” side. Then, the POLQA
wideband algorithm was applied
to derive a “Mean Opinion Score”
(MOS) on a scale between 1 and
4.75. Higher scores mean beer
voice quality.
The circuit switched MOS showed the
impact of the dierent technology
implementaons between the
carriers. Verizon and AT&T don’t
use wideband or HD codecs in their
CDMA and UMTS networks, which
resulted in average MOS scores
around 2.3. Both T-Mobile andSprint’s networks showed beer
average MOS scores of 2.77.
VoLTE with its HD voice codecs lis
the VoLTE-preferred channels of
the three VoLTE-carriers to speech
quality scores around 3.5-3.6. This
is an impressive improvement for
customers, especially those of AT&T
and Verizon, which have the lower
MOS scores on their legacy networks
compared to T-Mobile. Sprint is
clearly missing out on an opportunity
to improve the customer experience.
Voice Quality Improvements
Voice Quality (MOS - Mean Opinion Score)
A T & T
2 .
3 5
3 .
5 5
2 .
7 7
S p r i n t
2 .
7 7
T - M o b i l e
3 . 5 4
0
1
2
3
4
2 .
2 8
V e r i z o n
3 .
6 0
12
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VoLTE Channel CallRetainabilityThe overall dropped call raos of
the VoLTE channel were only slightly
higher than the drop raos of thelegacy channel. This is impressive for
such a new technology with minor
room for improvement.
Both AT&T and T-Mobile have imple-
mented SRVCC (Single Radio Voice
Call Connuity) funcons in their
network to hand exisng VoLTE voice
calls over to their legacy networks
when a device leaves the LTE foot-
print. Ideally, SRVCC does not result
in interrupons such as speech gaps
noceable to callers.
All carriers showed a good LTE foot-
print inside the Capital Beltway.
There were just ve SRVCC aempts
on AT&T and one on T-Mobile.
All of them were successful and didnot result in call interrupons. AT&T
handed down the VoLTE wideband
call to a narrowband 3G UMTS call
and took on average 140 millisec-
onds, while interesngly T-Mobile
handed down the wideband VoLTE
call to a narrowband 2G GSM call
within 215 milliseconds, and then
aer another 21 seconds handed
it over to a 3G UMTS call. This sug-
gests dierent SRVCC layer strategies
between AT&T and T-Mobile. In con-
clusion, SRVCC successfully provides
a soluon for leaving the networks’
LTE footprints, with an expected re-
ducon in voice quality and a slightly
dierent implementaon betweenAT&T and T-Mobile.
Verizon Wireless has not implement-
ed SRVCC funconality; when go-
ing out of LTE coverage, an ongoing
VoLTE call would drop. The coverage
requirements for the 4G network of
Verizon with VoLTE enabled are thus
much higher as there is no safety net
of SRVCC. It needs to provide congu-
ous LTE coverage to keep VoLTE calls
going.
-90dB
-45dB
-50dB
-55dB
-35dB
-40dB
-30dB
-60dB
-65dB
-70dB
-75dB
-80dB
-85dB
2000Hz 3000Hz 4000Hz 5000Hz1000Hz 7000Hz 8000Hz 9000Hz6000Hz 11000Hz 12000Hz 13000Hz 14000Hz10000Hz
-90dB
-45dB
-50dB
-55dB
-35dB
-40dB
-30dB
-60dB
-65dB
-70dB
-75dB
-80dB
-85dB
2000Hz 3000Hz 4000Hz 5000Hz1000Hz 7000Hz 8000Hz 9000Hz6000Hz 11000Hz 12000Hz 13000Hz 14000Hz10000Hz
Speech sample received on legacy UMTS
Original speech sample
Original speech sample
Speech sample received on VoLTE
1
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nternaonalComparison
The U.S. is one of the rst countries
with commercially available VoLTE
services. P3 wanted to see how much
carriers in other countries could
benet from introducing VoLTE if
they follow the U.S. implementaons.
P3 has carefully selected relevant
metropolitan areas around the
world with recent measurement
results from carriers without VoLTE
deployments, and compared voice
quality and call setup mes in these
markets with P3’s U.S. VoLTE-to-
VoLTE results.
Voice quality in these markets is
already on a fairly good level, but
comparison with the U.S. VoLTE-to-
VoLTE results shows improvement
potenal in many of these markets,
especially for call setup mes. It will
be interesng to see if connued
opmizaon of their VoLTE networks
will move U.S. carriers even farther
ahead, and how the rst VoLTE
implementaons in the internaonal
markets will perform.
Boom line: many internaonal networks could benet
from an upgrade to the latest VoLTE technology.
3.60
0
1
2
3
4(the higher the beer)
Average Voice Quality [MOS - Mean Opinion Score]
legacy calls only VoLTE to VoLTE calls only
14
A m s t e r d a m
B e r l i n
M u n i c h
V i e n n a
Z u r i c h
L o n d o n
M e l b o u r n e
S y d n e y
W a s h i n g t o n , D . C .
W a s h i n g t o n , D . C .
3.56
3.333.16 3.22 3.12
3.33 3.343.52
2.55
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The P3 U.S. Public Benchmark 2015
evaluated the improvements that
Voice-over-LTE brings over the
legacy voice services, by performing
extensive measurements in the
Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
With VoLTE, the U.S. carriers overtake
European carriers in terms of voice
quality and call setup speeds. Yet,
the U.S. carriers will sll have to
implement VoLTE calling across
networks and VoLTE roaming, to
broaden the number of calls that
benet from these improvements.
Without a VoLTE implementaon,
Sprint is currently trailing behind
its U.S. competors and will greatly
benet from its introducon.
All carriers already oer a number of
VoLTE-capable devices from Apple,
HTC, LG and Samsung. Verizon
Wireless also oers Motorola
VoLTE phones. But, in many cases,
customers sll need to opt-in to
enable the VoLTE services and should
contact their carriers to enable this
new feature.
VoLTE currently is being deployed by a
number of carriers around the globe.
The U.S. results show what is already
possible with VoLTE with regard
to improved voice quality and call
setup mes. Further improvements
can be expected over me. P3communicaons will connue to
follow the evoluon of networks and
the introducon of new technologies.
Conclusions
The results clearly show: VoLTE is ready for everyday use
and brings signicant improvements to the customerexperience.
0
2
3
1
4
5
6
7
8
(the faster the beer)
Average call setup mes [s]
legacy calls only VoLTE to VoLTE calls only
A m s t e r d
a m
B e r l i n
M u n i c h
V i e n n a
Z u r i c h
L o n d o n
M e l b o u r n e
S y d n e y
W a s h i n g
t o n , D . C .
W a s h i n g
t o n , D . C .
6.76
6.39
7.07
8.41 8.32
6.19
5.245.52
6.99
2.69
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P3 communicaons, Inc, 412 Mt. Kemble Ave, Suite G20s, Morristown, NJ 07960
phone +1 973 984 6050, [email protected]
Headquarters:
Aachen (GER), Belgrade (SRB), Morristown (NJ, USA), Sydney (AUS)
All rights reserved. The informaon and statements provided in this document are for informaonal purposes only. Any measurements, recommendaons, opinions or ndings
provided are only true and accurate for the condions encountered at the me of any survey and P3 communicaons accepts no liability for any errors or omissions. In no event will
P3 communicaons be liable for any consequenal, indirect or incidental damages whatsoever, including lost prots, business, contracts, revenue or ancipated savings arising out of the use
of any P3 communicaons products or documentaon (or from errors or deciencies therein), reliance on the data or measurements produced or informaon contained within.
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www.p3-group.com
The Future
The P3 U.S. Public Benchmark 2015 is intended
to be the rst in a regular series of such reports
The mobile industry in the U.S. moves very quickly and is at the forefront of
deploying and operang some of the newest LTE technologies, like VoLTE,
LTE-Advanced, Carrier Aggregaon and WiFi ooading.
Right now, each of the carriers has a number of major cung-edge iniaves
under development to boost their networks and services in dierent ways.
P3 expects to see signicant changes by the me it performs the
naonwide P3 Mobile Benchmark U.S. 2016, which will cover a signicantly
larger geographic scope and addional services.