Telefonica Germany gears up for VoLTE

Telefonica Germany gears up for VoLTE
Operator taps E*******'s IMS portfolio; plans to launch commercial service once it has compatible devices in stock.
Telefonica Germany is on the cusp of launching voice over LTE (VoLTE) services.

The operator has completed the upgrade of its infrastructure in all areas covered by its LTE network. Commercial services will be available once it is in a position to offer a full range of VoLTE-compatible devices.

Telefonica's VoLTE service is based on E*******'s IMS portfolio. The Swedish vendor also provided system integration services for the operator's multi-vendor network that covered deployment, end-to-end design and verification, and fault analysis. Telefonica is also using E*******'s single radio voice call continuity (SRVCC) solution to enable seamless handover from LTE to 3G and 2G networks.

"We are delighted that Telefonica has selected us as their partner to become one of Europe's very first operators to launch VoLTE. Based on our IMS solution, Telefonica is now able to provide a modern communications experience for their users on the latest LTE smartphones," said Anders Lindblad, head of E*******'s Cloud and IP business unit, in a statement on Tuesday.

When it goes live, Telefonica's VoLTE service will provide high-definition voice call quality and instant call setup, without interrupting the user's data session.

In future, Telefonica plans to use VoLTE as a basis for fixed-mobile convergent services, including video calling, video conferencing and collaboration.

"When we started six years ago with the investment into IMS to deliver DSL voice services, we laid the seed for a strategic modernisation of our core service architecture," said Karsten Schröder, head of converged solutions at Telefonica Germany.

"With the advent of VoLTE, we were able to harvest the fruits by re-using the very same IMS core for our mobile customers, being the first operator proving that VoLTE is not just a standard, but can be used in a real-life multi-vendor environment. As a result, the convergent architecture allows us today to deliver seamless services agnostic to the physical access by which the customer is connected to our network," he said.