New Year, New Launches: IP Comms Gaining Momentum

At the GSMA, we work with mobile network operators from across the globe, helping them to deliver global interconnected all-IP communications services, such as such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE), Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi), Video over LTE (ViLTE) and Rich Communications (RCS), to their subscribers. So we were particularly pleased to see the near year in with news of a number of different IP comms launches in various markets around the world.

Italy’s TIM announced the launch of its VoLTE offer called ‘Voce 4G’ to customers. It promises to deliver vastly improved voice calls and super-fast 4G data access and will be available free to customers on certain tariffs. TIM also announced that it had upgraded its LTE-A services in selected cities including Milan, Rome, Naples, Turin, Genoa and Prato, giving customers connectivity speeds of up to 300 Mbps. AT&T also announced that its VoLTE network had hit an incredible 27 million subscribers, making it the largest VoLTE provider in the country, and over in Germany, Deutsche Telekom launched their VoLTE offer, promising clear and natural sounding calls in HD Voice as well as quick call set up times and fast data speeds. Finally, further afield in Australia, Vodafone rolled out their offering initially throughout Queensland, with plans to spread the service to other regions on selected handsets.

LTE is seeing huge momentum at the moment; in fact it is experiencing the fastest deployment and consumer adoption rate of any mobile telecoms technology, with 432 operator launches in 146 countries to date, with service coverage that reaches 45% of the world’s population.

Verizon Wireless also launched its ‘Advanced Calling’ VoWiFi service, which will enable customers to make and receive calls, as well as make video calls over a Wi-Fi connection. VoWiFi has had 15 launches in 9 markets to date. Russia’s MTS also announced news of a new service called MTS Connect, which is available as an app and will enable customers to make video or voice calls, send instant messages and share files. It’s based on the GSMA’s RCS specifications and will work on any network whether it’s 2G, 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi. RCS is the GSMA-backed technology for advanced messaging services built on an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) backbone. To date, 47 operators in 34 countries have launched services to market and there are currently 78 RCS-capable handsets available.

Operators are in an excellent position to offer secure, ubiquitous all-IP solutions with reach, reliability and richness and the transition from circuit-switched to all-IP communications will allow them to deliver an enhanced user experience that, when interconnected with other operators, offers truly global reach and scale. We look forward to helping other operators in their efforts to give consumers even better mobile experiences this year and beyond.

To find out more about the GSMA’s Network 2020 programme, go to www.gsma.com/network2020.