VoLTE and RCS:

Getting it Right

PA RT

Contents
VoLTE and RCS Ramp Up

Down to the Device

Working with Chipsets

Working with RCS
Validating VoLTE and RCS Applications

5
5
5

VoLTE and VoWi-Fi

Hiding the Seams

7
8

Interoperability

Fragmentation Issues Challenge VoLTE Interoperability

Test Plans will Help
More Essentials: Interconnections and Roaming

10
11
12

What Makes or Breaks the VoLTE User Experience

Paradigm Shift
Handoffs and Handsets
Create More Variables

13
14
15
16
16

VoLTE and RCS

Ramp Up

VoLTE and RCS Ramp Up

The global mobile industry

has committed to VoLTE as
the technology of choice to
provide voice and RCS to deliver
multimedia services on LTE.
VoLTE and RCS deployments are
gaining momentum and dozens
of operators are launching
commercial services in 2015.
Dozens more will help accelerate
the rollout into 2016 and beyond.
VoLTE has significant implications
for the mobile ecosystem because
it will introduce fundamental
changes in the mobile service
environment and the user
experience. With VoLTE, operators
will finally have the capability to
shed their legacy circuit-switched
networks and consolidate all of
their voice, video and messaging
services on IP. Theyll be able
to offer high-definition voice,
conversational video and other
features to better compete with
over-the-top providers. Theyll also
gain significant cost efficiencies
and a welcome opportunity to
free up 2G and 3G spectrum for
their LTE networks. The industry
must succeed with VoLTE and RCS
because it will enable the most
essential services delivered on

LTE beyond high-speed mobile

data. But theres much more to
a successful launch than the
initial rollout and as services are
established, companies must focus
making sure it delivers what it
promises.
To get it right, operators must meet
several challenges. Above all, they
must ensure their VoLTE services
are well-received by customers.
They need to maintain customer
loyalty and attract new customers
who use the services if they want
to gain full benefit of VoLTEs
operational and spectral benefits.
Many factors can influence the
markets acceptance. Devices
must interoperate and calls must
work across networks. Customers
must be able to roam with
consistent services and they need
the capability to have seamless
handoffs between VoLTE and
Voice-over-Wi-Fi services.
This e-book discusses all of
these challenges, and more. It
also explains how developers
can create compelling RCS and
VoLTE applications, native to the
device, to intrigue and engage the
customer base.

Down to the Device

CHAPTER 1

Down to
the Device
Developing embedded
devices with VoLTE and RCS
By Peggy Albright

As the mobile industry brings voice over LTE (VoLTE) to market, service providers
have an opportunity to build customer services that were simply not possible in
the circuit switched environment. Companies will be able to take mobile services
beyond the traditional restrictions of voice and text. Theyll have a chance to
create innovative features that can better engage customers and, they hope,
attract new users to their networks.

VoLTE has huge implications. Once youre

doing voice, video and SMS in the IP domain,
those data flows are more like data applications than they ever were before, said Peter
Rysavy, president of Rysavy Research. The
ability to integrate voice and video messaging into other apps opens the door for massive innovation that can occur.
VoLTE, when offered with conversational video, gives mobile operators an essential tool
to offer applications that rivaland potentially outperformover-the-top (OTT) options
such as Apples FaceTime and Microsofts
Skype. The creation of these new services
requires extensive software development at
the chipset, device and infrastructure levels.
This article focuses on software that is embedded as native solutions and integrated
with vital device functions to create these
new capabilities. If done well, the embedded
software plays a tangible role in this new
competitive environment.

If you make these things

native and easy to use and
reduce the number of clicks
to get to an app, people are
going to use the services.
Ian Maclean
Vice President of Strategy at Mavenir Systems

Embedding VoLTE software does require

a learning curve. Device developers must
have expertise not only in phone manufacturing and design, they must now learn how
to add these new software capabilities with
standards they havent used before. They
need to implement new software stacks and
media engines and provide security, quality
of service (QoS) assurance and support. The
features must interoperate, pass conformance and operator certification tests.
It requires a lot of development and a lot of
expertise and knowledge in IMS and VoLTE
to implement it correctly, said Sagi Subocki,
head of products for the developer tools
business unit at Spirent Communications.

Down to the Device

Working with Chipsets

Because VoLTE is based on IMS,
it must have appropriate client
functionality installed on customer
devices. Ambitious device
manufacturers that have significant
R&D resources, silicon processing
as well as device production
capabilities might develop their
VoLTE expertise and capabilities
in house so they can apply
differentiating, advanced services to
their own product lines.
Some device manufacturers,
however, build their VoLTE
capabilities by using chipsets,
provided by their silicon vendors,
which already include the IMS
client stack. This is also convenient
for manufacturers because many
chipset companies are offering
toolkits and terminal APIs with their
chips to facilitate VoLTE application
development by their customers
and partners.

There are variations in chipsets

from vendor to vendor. Not all
chipsets offer all VoLTE capabilities.
Some offer voice and messaging,
while others offer voice, messaging
as well as video. Some chipsets
provide more flexibility for
customization than others.
Manufacturers also use software
development kits (SDKs) from the
vendor community to facilitate IMS,
VoLTE or RCS development for
chipsets and devices. Depending
on the solution used, SDKs can
be used to launch customizable
voice, video and messaging
features that are carrier grade and
standards compliant and configured
to interoperate with other similar
services. The conveniences mean
that the manufacturer doesnt need
to develop in-house expertise or
perform complex integrations,
which can help shorten time to
market.

Working
with RCS
Rich Communications Services
(RCS) uses VoLTE as a foundation
and adds conversational video,
video sharing, presence, buddy
lists, messaging, geolocation
and other capabilities on top of
the VoLTE foundation to create
advanced multimedia features in a
device.
Maclean envisions that these
types of features could be used,
for example, to evolve the dialer
function on a device so that it
provides a new user experience
based on presence and that works
across devices, operating systems
and networks. For this application,
an embedded client could work
with an intelligent server to support
conversational messaging features
and messaging delivery verification.
RCS is typically not embedded in
chipsets. Developers will need to
perform the integration work to
add the capabilities into chips and
devices or adopt a commercial SDK
to use when performing this work.
As with VoLTE, these services,
when properly implemented, will
add interoperable, carrier-grade
features.

Validating
VoLTE and RCS
Applications
Testing is often one of the most
time-consuming phases of the
software development life cycle.
For VoLTE and RCS, developers
need to perform tests to make sure
their services and applications will
work on carrier networks according
to the standards specifications,
pass standards conformance tests
and operator-specific certification
processes. Specialized testing tools
that can emulate carrier-realistic
end-to-end environments in the lab
help developers iron out any issues
during product development.

You hope to get to

the operators testing
phase with a product
that is as mature as
possible.
Sagi Subocki
Head of Products for the
Developer Tools Business Unit
Spirent Communications

VoLTE and VoWi-Fi

CHAPTER 2

VoLTE and VoWi-Fi

Bridging the Gap
By Tim Kridel

Licensed and unlicensed spectrum are more complementary than

competitive. Theyre less oil and vinegar and more peanut butter
and jelly.

So said FCC Chairman

Tom Wheeler last year as he
explained the commissions
decision to free up another 100
MHz of spectrum for Wi-Fi. The
extra spectrum is good news for
mobile operators that use Wi-Fi to
offload data traffic and, increasingly,
voice too.
Theres definitely a lot of interest
in VoWi-Fi, said Michael Thelander,
CEO and founder of Signals
Research Group. A lot of that was
driven by the iPhone and Apple.
When they announced support
for IMS-based VoWi-Fi, operators
started embracing that as a service
they wanted to support.

Some operators like VoWi-Fi as a

relatively low-cost opportunity to try
their hand at IP calling.
Thats another reason why so
many smaller operators are looking
at VoWi-Fi: Its a chance to have
a commercial offering thats VoIP
based, said Ray Vinson, product
manager at Interop Technologies.
It kind of sticks their toes in the
water before they go to a full VoLTE
solution.

VoLTE and VoWi-Fi

VoWi-Fi can also be another tool

for targeting the enterprise market.
One example is businesses where
employees use their mobile as
their primary phone, sometimes
to the point that their employers
question the capex and opex of
providing them with deskphones.
VoWi-Fi provides operators with a
way to serve that market segment
without the expense of adding
capacity at nearby cell sites or
deploying in-building solutions such
as distributed antenna system (DAS)
technologies.
But for VoWi-Fi to be a viable
alternative for those customers,
they need the ability to start a
call in the office on Wi-Fi and
then seamlessly switch to LTE as
they walk out the door. Ditto for
consumers who want to use VoWiFi at home or as a way to minimize
roaming charges when theyre
traveling abroad.

Some operators, such as Swisscom,

offer seamless data handoffs
between cellular and Wi-Fi. But so
far, no commercial services do the
same with VoLTE and VoWi-Fi. That
should change over the next year
or so.

There are some Tier 1s

planning on launching
both VoWi-Fi and VoLTE
this year, so theres a
lot of testing going on.
Ray Vinson
Product Manager
Interop Technologies

I think youre going to see a lot of

VoWi-Fi launches, especially in the
next couple of quarters. Then youll
see the VoLTE launches later.

VoLTE and VoWi-Fi

Hiding the Seams

Seamlessness is influenced by the
owner of the Wi-Fi network. For
example, some mobile operators
own public Wi-Fi networks, so they
have control over those hotspots
abilities to provide seamless
handoffs and good Wi-Fi calling
experience.

The major issue

operators must face is
the need to integrate
Wi-Fi as part of the core
infrastructure of their
cell site.
Tiago Rodrigues
Program Director
Wireless Broadband Alliance

They need to use Wi-Fi as one

more RAN that they consider
trusted and can be managed by the
network elements, he said.

Mobile operators have little or

no control over hotspots owned
by a business partner or the
customers themselves, such as
an office WLAN. So if an operator
is concerned about the customer
experience on Wi-Fi, it could
limit handoffs from VoLTE only to
hotspots it owns.

Hotspot operators and aggregators

want people to use their networks,
and quality is one way to convince
them to pay for access versus using
free alternatives. Vinson said he
has been using T-Mobiles VoWi-Fi
service for about six months, and
his experience shows that 802.11
doesnt have to feel like a step
down.

One of the nice features of VoLTE

is you give it guaranteed lane on
the freeway, so to speak, Thelander
said. Its dedicated, and no matter
what other traffic is there, your call
gets priority. On Wi-Fi, there are
some crude mechanisms that would
give certain traffic some priority, but
its not nearly to the same degree
that you get on LTE.

Most of the time I dont even know

what Im using, Vinson said. I have
to look at the phone to see that Im
using VoWi-Fi. Ultimately thats what
operators want. It has to be a good
call quality experience to be able to
do that.

Regardless of who owns the

hotspot, operators dont want the
handoffs to be noticeable. They
dont want big variations in call
quality, for example.

Boingo already monitors its hotspot

partners to make sure theyre
providing the quality-of-service
(QoS) that its retail and wholesale
customers want. Those that dont
meet that requirement are dropped
from its directory. If more hotspot
operators and aggregators provide
QoS service-level agreements, it
would help ensure that Wi-Fi calling
doesnt seem like a step down in
terms of customer experience.

We have testing solutions that

allow the device manufacturer
to test the performance of WiFi calling and VoLTE-to-Wi-Fi
offloading, said Saul Einbinder, vice
president of marketing at Spirent
Communications. As part of that
[VoLTE-to-VoWi-Fi] transition, for
example, the device side has to
make sure it negotiates properly
with the far end. The codec
selection might have to change
during the call.
Vendors also are developing tools
that enable operators to track
handoffs so they know how to
charge accordingly. That task can
be complex. How are you going

to charge if youre roaming, and

you have one minute over LTE and
two minutes over Wi-Fi? Rodrigues
asked.
On the plus side, some of the
interoperability framework is already
in place.
The nice thing is that from a
network perspective, its a lot of the
same systems, Vinson said. Youre
still using a telecommunications
application server (TAS), the VoIP
technology, the same codecs,
especially the codec for HD Voice.
That infrastructure can help ensure
that VoLTE-to-Wi-Fi handoffs provide
a better user experience than
when the cellular service is circuitswitched.
Call setup for VoLTE and VoWiFi is much faster than with circuit
switched, Vinson said. Some of
those inbound handover issues with
authentication will be taken care of
with VoLTE because its using the
same call setup methodology for
Wi-Fi as it is for VoLTE. I think its
going to fix a lot of the issues were
dealing with today.

Interoperability

CHAPTER 3

Interoperability
A Must-Have for Strong
Market Growth
By Peggy Albright

Mobile operators are finally ramping up their voice over LTE

(VoLTE) deployments. Theyll use the technology to offer highdefinition voice calling and enriched services, like FaceTime, to their
customers. Internally, operators will gain spectral efficiencies and
important opportunities to free up 2G and 3G spectrum to support
LTE coverage.

But launching a new service doesnt

guarantee market acceptance or
success. To facilitate wide-scale
adoption and fully exploit VoLTEs
benefits, devices must interoperate,
calls must work across networks and
customers must be able to roam with
consistent services.
Operators certainly accept that
interoperability will be essential,
having learned that lesson from GSM
and SMS, for example, but this is
extremely complex, said Caroline
Gabriel, research director at Rethink
Technology Research.

The industry is tackling these

issues and 2015 could become the
year in which important strides are
made. AT&T and Verizon Wireless
are providing impetus with their
commitment to enable VoLTE-toVoLTE connections between their
customers in 2015. Their experience,
and an operator community that is
motivated to build interoperability
test strategies, could help build
momentum. Nagging challenges,
such as debates over VoLTE roaming
architectures, could hinder growth,
however.

Its not just about connecting

different operators VoLTE calls, but
layering the services that will make
VoLTE attractive on top, such as
conferencing and video chat, making
those interoperate too, and also
allowing for fallback to 3G when no
4G is available.
9

Interoperability

Fragmentation Issues Challenge VoLTE Interoperability

The telecom industry needs
standards to facilitate interoperability
and this is also the case with
VoLTE. Led by the GSMA, operators
are using common technology
implementations that are based on
3GPP specifications and leverage
IMS infrastructure to provide carriergrade voice over LTE (VoLTE);
conversational video over LTE
(ViLTE) and rich communications
services (RCS). GSMA is continuing
to refine the standards to improve
interoperability and make VoLTE
more robust.

We think that any

device should work on
anybodys network.
David Hutton
Director of Technology
GSMA

10

We very much value the experience

we have today in mobile telephony,
and what we had with GSM and
3G, where you can have device
portability and the ability to swap
SIMs so youre not bound to a
particular operator network. Thats
what wed like to do going forward.
The telecom industry usually
provides leeway in how
specifications are used so
companies can differentiate
their offerings or configure their
deployments to meet their own
network requirements. For VoLTE,
this flexibility has been vexing.
Even when a VoLTE device passes
conformance testing to ensure
compliance with the standards, its
ability to interoperate with other
VoLTE devices is not guaranteed.
Variable client software settings,
differing software versions,
processor technologies, parameters
established in the core network, and
LTE frequency bands can all create
product incompatibilities.

The issues have created a high

degree of lack of interoperability
between devices, even
between devices from the same
manufacturer, said Emil Olbrich,
vice president of networks at Signals
Research Group.
Furthermore, VoLTE devices have
more responsibility for facilitating
interoperability compared to devices
that operate on circuit switched
networks. To enable a VoLTE-toVoLTE voice call, for example, the
devices must establish a handshake
and make sure theyre using the
same voice codec, quality-of-service
(QoS) bearer and other features.
RCS will place similar responsibilities
on devices.
Were finding that conference
calling, presence, and other
advanced features all require deviceto-device interoperability, said
Sue Ahimovic, product marketing
manager, Wireless at Spirent
Communications.

Interoperability

Test Plans will Help

Interoperability will gain importance
and complexity as more operators
deploy VoLTE and as more devices
come to market. Better and more
pervasive interoperability testing will
be needed to enable the markets
growth.
Leading carriers are very motivated
to create extensive test plans and
require them of OEMs and the
ecosystem, said Ahimovic. They
recognize these things need to be
tested and are coming on board
quickly.
Operators can perform the testing
themselves, require their partners
to perform specified tests early in
the product development cycle
to identify potential issues, and
specify device-to-device testing
methodologies that can be done
in the lab or on a live network,
suggested Saul Einbinder, vice
president of marketing at Spirent.

This year GSMA is hosting

interoperability test events with
leading operators and vendors to
test device interoperability within
and across networks. The GSMA
will use findings from the events to
define test cases companies can
to accelerate the introduction of
interoperable devices and networks.
Olbrich believes that the industry
would also benefit from an open,
dedicated test environment that
can accurately represent carriers
networks and provide a process for
evaluating test devices against each
network. The environment would
make it easier for companies to
test dozens or hundreds of devices
operating against each other on
multiple networks.
If the test industry can do that, this
problem gets mitigated quickly,
because now you have a common
platform to test against and you
have a high degree of certainty that
devices are interoperable, he said.

11

Interoperability

More Essentials: Interconnections and Roaming

To help the industry advance VoLTE
beyond siloed services on individual
networks, operators must also have IP
interconnection agreements with one another so their respective customers can
call each other and enjoy consistent endto-end HD voice calls. The GSMA expects
to see IP interconnected networks in the
second half of 2015.

Ed Elkin
Head of Marketing for
Communications and Collaboration
Alcatel-Lucent

Operators will also need to forge agreements with international partners to

extend their geographic coverage, and IP
exchanges will facilitate these IP interconnections.

example, various parameter settings

defined in the IMS core network and the
VoLTE client can vary from carrier to carrier, which can prevent a device from one
carrier registering on another network,
creates roaming issues.

Finally, operators must offer roaming

capabilities so customers can enjoy their
VoLTE services and the VoLTE user experience even when they travel to another
country.

The industry also needs to settle on an

architectural model for roaming. The options include the current default model,
local breakout (LBO), and an alternative
home routing option (S8 HR).

Today we can go around the world and

our 2G and 3G services work great. We
must do that for VoLTE as well, said Ed
Elkin, head of marketing for communications and collaboration at Alcatel-Lucent.

The GSMA is testing both roaming alternatives with leading operators in the U.S.,
China, Japan and Korea.

Roaming is currently inhibited by both

technical and architectural issues. For

12

Roaming is a core value. It

has to work great.

What Makes or Breaks the VoLTE User Experience

CHAPTER 4

What Makes or Breaks the

VoLTE User Experience

If mobile calling is dead, killed off by SMS,

Facebook and other data services, the
numbers say otherwise. Americans, for
example, talked 2.62 trillion minutes in 2013,
up from 2.3 trillion in 2012, according to CTIA.

By Tim Kridel

13

What Makes or Breaks the VoLTE User Experience

Voice is a half-a-trilliondollar business.

Stphane Tral
Head of Marketing for
Principal Analyst for Mobile Infrastructure
and Carrier Economics
Infonetics Research

And three years from now, voice will

still be about 45 to 48 percent of total
mobile service revenue, he predicts.
Those numbers highlight one reason
why its critical for mobile operators
to ensure that their VoLTE services
provide a user experience thats at
least as good as the circuit-switched
services VoLTE replaces. Other reasons include the following:

14

Its cheaper for operators to keep

customers than to replace them.
In Nokia Solutions and Networks
annual surveys regarding
acquisition and retention, call
quality is one of the top loyalty
factors worldwide and No. 1 in
the U.S.
Consistently reliable, high-quality
calling experiences encourage
consumers and businesspeople
to drop their wireline services
and shift that spending to mobile.
When VoLTE works well,
operators can scuttle the
overhead of their 3G/2G
networks and refarm that
spectrum.

What Makes or Breaks the VoLTE User Experience

Paradigm Shift
But ensuring a great VoLTE user
experience is easier said than
done. One indication is that operators, when issuing press releases
about their VoLTE launches, wont
discuss how theyre measuring and
maximizing call quality.
Theres a lot of hesitancy on the
part of operators, said Michael
Thelander, CEO and founder of
Signals Research Group (SRG).
Theyre really sensitive to the
quality of their networks. If your LTE
coverage isnt perfect, youre going
to have problems.
Virtually all VoLTE rollouts have
been in select markets rather than
across an operators entire footprint. Thats partly because LTE
itself is still relatively new for most
operators, so theyre still optimizing their networks on a market-bymarket basis. For example, it takes
time to ferret out all of the things
causing packet loss, which is a
common reason for poor VoLTE
call quality.

Thats mostly due to IP connectivity and configuration issues [in] the

access network, the backhaul and
the core, said Jeff Atkins, director
of marketing at Spirent Communications.
And even if an operator has spent
a few years optimizing its LTE
network, it still has to do another
round of tweaking when it layers
on VoLTE.
Basically it doesnt work right out
of the box, Atkins said. When you
turn it on in the network, substantial optimization needs to be done
before VoLTE outperforms legacy
and OTT services.
The people doing this work come
from a circuit-switched world,
where IP is used only for data.
VoLTE is the first time theyve had
to use IP for voice-related tasks
such as call setup and signaling.
That learning curve compounds
the challenge of addressing
end-to-end delay, which is the

aggregate of delays that have

accumulated at various points in
the network and the device. Also
known as one-way conversational
delay, it becomes noticeable to
customers when it reaches the
point where callers start talking
over each other.
To measure end-to-end delay, operators need devices on both ends
of a VoLTE session. Thats one
of the areas weve been working
on, Atkins said. We have a new
capability that lets you do highly
accurate end-to-end delay measurements.
By collecting IP information at the
device and then correlating that
with user experience data, operators can understand the relationship between the two. These forensic insights are useful for tweaking
the network to minimize IP-related
problems that would undermine
future VoLTE calls.

Substantial
optimization needs to
be done before VoLTE
outperforms legacy and
OTT services.
Jeff Atkins
Director of Marketing
Spirent Communications

15

What Makes or Breaks the VoLTE User Experience

Handoffs and Handsets

Create More Variables

Some factors are beyond the operators control. For example, its futile to try to use policy to
enforce quality of service (QoS) when VoLTE calls traverse multiple networks.

Once that packet goes into somebody

elses network, that QoS setting can be
changed, said Ray Vinson, product manager
at Interop Technologies, a vendor whose
products include VoLTE platforms.
Furthermore, operators dont directly control the quality of the mics and speakers
in the customers handset or headset. But
operators can ask handset vendors to make
changes to their firmware and VoLTE client,
both of which play a major role in call quality.
In fact, even when two different vendors
phones use the same suppliers audio components, chipsets and reference designs,
there often are still big differences in call
quality.

16

Even with all that commonality, when operators evaluate those devices on their network,
they see wildly different performance levels
and different levels of experience, Atkins
said. The call-setup time or speech quality
will be significantly different. So theyre trying
to get an apples-to-apples comparison of
those devices before they get launched and
then work with the manufacturers to tweak
their designs to make sure they all have the
acceptable levels.

He added: We often find that changes that

need to be made are just at the software
and firmware level. The manufacturers are
often able to make very small changes in the
firmware or other places and in a matter of
days, release a device that offers some level
of improvement.
When operators get VoLTE rightfrom the
network through the handsetthe service
shines in ways that customers cant overlook. For example, in summer 2014, Signals Research Group tested a commercial
VoLTE network against a circuit-switched 3G
network and Skypes high-definition voice
service. The VoLTE network provided measurably higher call quality than both, and it set
up calls twice as fast as the circuit-switched
network.

For more information on VoLTE & RCS:

http://www.spirent.com/Solutions/Volte
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Every twist and turn, tired and tested:
VoLTE testing explained

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2015 Spirent Communications, Inc. All of the company names and/or brand names
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Spirent and its logo device, are either registered trademarks or trademarks pending
registration in accordance with relevant national laws. All rights reserved. Specifications
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