While IMS has bedded down and people generally understand OTT and RCS, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) seems stuck in a vortex of hype and misunderstanding. On the one hand, you have Alcatel Lucent announcing that they’ve issued 88 million VoLTE user licenses; on the other, you have Infonetics Research reporting 8 million in actual VoLTE users at the end of 2013. In the last few weeks T-Mobile USA, AT&T, NTT Docomo and PCCW in Hong Kong have all announced VoLTE services coming on stream. 

So, what’s the real story? Is VoLTE taking off? How are operators going about it? The answers you get to these questions will depend hugely on who you’re talking to.

From Cicero’s viewpoint, LTE looks really interesting indeed and uniquely perhaps not just in the realm of mobile operators. Wide area coverage with high bandwidth and low latency, all covered by a big data bundle – the VoIP provider’s dream!

VoLTE today is mostly alked about in the context of mobile operators and high definition voice services. A little known and possibly misunderstood fact is that you don’t have to be a mobile operator to offer VoLTE.  If you’re a cable operator or fixed-line operator offering an OTT mobile VoIP service using Wi-Fi or 3G you too can offer VoLTE.  It doesn’t mean changing your existing platform. It doesn’t require specific handsets. Once your OTT client is configured to support 3G/4G networks your subscribers can simply make and recieve calls using a 4G network and hey presto - you’re offering VoLTE.

 For further information on Cicero’s solutions visit www.ciceronetworks.com