Nokia has helped Russian operator MTS to make the first Voice over LTE call using its telco cloud infrastructure.
The vendor provided its telco cloud based voice core technology, including its IP Multimedia Subsystem, Telephony Application Server and Home Subscriber Server, to be used alongside MTS’s LTE radio network.
The deployment and management of cloud applications was handled by Nokia’s Cloud Application Manager. The vendor added that its Professional Services for VoLTE solution helped MTS to handle multi-vendor integration and core migration.
[Read more: NFV, SDN behind new Nokia, Juniper Networks telco cloud solution]
The test was carried out on MTS’s live network using smart devices. Nokia said the test showed how operators could offer high quality communication services on a cost-effective platform.
Andrey Ushatskiy, Chief Technical and IT Officer at MTS Group, commented: “VoLTE and telco cloud are principal technologies that will help us address new business opportunities and deliver a superior voice experience to our customers.
“This live implementation of virtualised VoLTE with our long-standing partner, Nokia, is an important proof-of-concept and shows our commitment to offering our customers the most advanced voice services possible.
“We expect that the compound annual growth of mobile data traffic will reach 79 percent by 2020 and have to prepare our networks to deliver a quality mobile broadband experience to our customers.”
Despite growing implementation of VoLTE, it is still lagging behind HD voice. According to figures from the Global mobile Suppliers Association, only 57 phones support the technology, out of 1,563 handsets that can run on LTE networks.
By contrast, the number of handsets supporting HD voice has more than doubled during the past 12 months, with 329 devices offering it.