Qualcomm shows off VoLTE handover
Working with Ericsson, it promises unbroken voice calls and integrated chipsets as carriers migrate from 3G to LTE
Published: 3 February, 2012
READ MORE: Qualcomm | Infrastructure | VoIP | LTE
Qualcomm and Ericsson have made a significant step forward in bringing mobile voice into the all-IP age, demonstrating hand-off between VoLTE (voice over LTE) and circuit switched 3G.
This will help make VoLTE a nearer term option for many cellcos, most of which are relying on circuit switched fallback (CSFB) or other interim solutions while they wait for full 4G voice to be ready. The exceptions are the US CDMA carriers, Verizon and MetroPCS, which will start rolling out VoLTE in the first half of this year.
But most operators in the GSM world will rely on HSPA for wide area coverage for many years to come, keeping LTE in hotzones, which will make integration of 3G and 4G voice services crucial. In their test, Qualcomm and Ericsson successfully passed a voice call from an LTE network to a 3G one using the SRVCC (single-radio voice call continuity) standard.
SRVCC is important because it will allow operators with CFSB to introduce VoLTE gradually and with better seamless performance than current solutions support. When the network needs to convert a call from IP to circuit-switched, usually because the customer has moved out of 4G coverage, it simply switches radio modes without breaking the call. The technology also paves the way to smaller, more power efficient LTE handsets which do not require separate modem chipsets for 4G and 3G. The phone used in the trial ran on a Snapdragon S4 system-on-chip and Qualcomm's newest modem chipset, the MSM8960, which adds LTE support and lower power consumption.
Meanwhile, Verizon is bypassing fallback altogether, claiming that LTE will be available over so much of its footprint when it turns on VoLTE that call drops will be a rarity.
Qualcomm explained: "SRVCC is the next logical step in 4G LTE voice...following the commercial launch of CSFB on smartphones in 2011. CSFB allows a single radio in the handset to dynamically switch from an LTE data connection to a 3G connection when the user needs to make or receive a call. Similarly, SRVCC support enables a single radio in the handset to execute a seamless handover of a voice call from an LTE network to a 3G network."
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