Telefónica claims to be among the first operators in Europe to complete its network upgrade for the commercial launch of VoLTE services, and has deployed the upgrade in all areas across Germany where it has LTE coverage.
“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 Telefónica 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.”
Ericsson will deploy its single radio voice call continuity (SRVCC) solution to enable the seamless handover of voice calls from LTE to 2G and 3G networks.
VoLTE is designed to provide end-users with high-definition voice quality, instant call set-up and the simultaneous operation of LTE data services during calls.
“Based on our IMS solution, Telefónica is now able to provide a modern communications experience for their users on the latest LTE smartphones,” said Anders Lindblad, head of business unit cloud and IP at Ericsson. “In the future they will also be able to cost-efficiently launch video communication and other new multimedia services on any accesses and any devices over their converged network."
In May this year, Bouygues Telecom in France also selected Ericsson for its VoLTE solution.
