IMTC Announces Successful Completion of Voice Over LTE Testing Over a Live LTE Infrastructure as Part of SuperOp! 2011
IMTC Completes its First Ever Multi-Device Voice over LTE (VoLTE) Testing over Live LTE Network as Part of 15th Annual SuperOp! 2011 in Hawaii, USA
The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) announced successful completion of Voice over LTE testing over a live LTE infrastructure as part of SuperOp! 2011, the premier testing event of the telecommunications industry for multimedia communication standards and products.
SuperOp!, organized and conducted by the IMTC, is a significant annual testing event for the multimedia communications, video conferencing and Telepresence industries. It brings together engineers from leading companies developing unified communications, video communication products, telecommunication and services worldwide. SuperOp! 2011 testing covered equipment and service interoperability on combinations of IP, 3G and LTE networks, and covered a broad range of technologies such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and IMS, HD Videoconferencing, TIP, Telepresence, HTTP Live Streaming (both Microsoft and Apple varieties) and traditional RTSP Streaming, as well as full spectrum of SIP-based and H.323-based videoconferencing systems.
During SuperOp! 2011, for the first time ever, Voice over LTE testing was conducted by Ericsson, Huawei, Intel Mobile, RADVISION, Samsung and ST-Ericsson over a live LTE. Complete infrastructure to include LTE enhanced radio access (eNB), Evolved Packet Core (EPC), and IMS were provided by Huawei. “This year’s event was a significant milestone in demonstrating for the first time ever, a successful VoLTE interoperability on a common User Network Interface (UNI) in a live LTE infrastructure using the IMTC specification. A fully interoperable and high quality voice service is fundamental to operators globally, and Huawei is honored to be a part of the effort in realization of that goal by providing our end-to-end VoLTE solution,” said Rouzbeh Farhoumand, Senior Director of Huawei and an IMTC Board of Directors Member.
Voice over LTE testing plan is developed by the IMTC IMS Activity Group, per the GSMA PRD IR.92 VoLTE specification. Testing during SuperOp! 2011 covered areas such as LTE voice call establishment, supplementary services (OIP, OIR, TIP ,TIR, HOLD and 3-way conferencing) and connectivity to legacy services. “Voice over LTE is gaining momentum, and there is a clear need for interoperability before commercial services can be deployed,” said Tsahi Levent-Levi, IMS Activity Group Co-Chairman and CTO of Technology Business Unit for RADVISION, ”Testing over a live LTE network at the SuperOp! 2011 is an important milestone that we have successfully achieved.”
Dan Warren, Senior Director of Technology at the GSMA commented, “The work by the IMTC and all efforts to progress Voice over LTE (VoLTE) interoperability deliver two key indicators: That the implementation of VoLTE is maturing rapidly; and that vendors are implementing the technology with a high degree of consistency. These two factors should encourage operators to deploy service, as well as demonstrate to the mobile community as a whole the beginnings of a new ‘voice ecosystem’ for next generation mobile broadband networks.”
The IMTC IMS Activity Group continues to develop testing plans for VoLTE IR.92 and plans to conduct additional VoLTE interoperability testing events this year, both independently and in cooperation with other industry consortia such as MSF and ETSI. Current members of the IMS Activity Group include AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Orange-FT, Qualcomm, RADVISION, Samsung, Sasken Communication, Sony Ericsson and ST-Ericsson. The IMTC IMS Activity Group likes to reiterate its open call for participation for all operators and equipment manufacturers to facilitate VoLTE service delivery world-wide.
IMTC’s SuperOp! 2011 was hosted by IMTC with event management from Global Inventures. Sponsors included Cisco, Polycom, Huawei, UCIF and Vidyo. Next SuperOp! interoperability testing event is expected to take place during April/May 2012 timeframe, location will be announced at a later date.
About the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC)
The IMTC is an industry-leading, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunication products and services based on open international standards. The IMTC hosts interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world. IMTC has hosted numerous events to test IMS, VoLTE, SIP, H.323, 3G-324M, TIP, 3G PS Streaming, and other Voice over IP products and services with each other. The IMTC Board of Directors includes representatives from AT&T, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, LifeSize Communications, Nokia, Polycom, RADVISION and Vidyo. The San Ramon, California-based consortium comprises approximately 40 member organizations from around the globe. Membership is open to any interested party, including vendors of audio, document, and video conferencing hardware and software; academic institutions; government agencies; and non-profit organizations. “The IMTC is making Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime.” Further information on IMTC can be found at http://www.imtc.org.
