VoLTE – The first IOT event

At the 2nd of February in Stockholm, winter-time in the city filled with snow, the IMTC IMS AG (Activity Group) met F2F (Face to Face) for inter-operability activity. This time, our challenge was to help bringing IMS Voice over LTE (VoLTE, a single industry-wide solution for voice over LTE adopted by GSMA) to the market.

During the three intense days, testing and discussions around VoLTE were in everybody’s minds: IMS, SIP, SDP, SS (Supplementary Services), basic call, test documents and other technical stuff. We from Ericsson, ST-Ericsson, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Sony Ericsson and Samsung (this time on remote access) achieved IMS Voice call establishment and started also with some supplementary services (SS).

At coffee breaks and during the testing sessions all participants took part in the discussions.

We have made real progress in this event, and now we have a lot of work ahead of us – there is more testing to be done and a test specification document to close and release publicly. It is up to us to ensure that companies can develop and release products supporting VoLTE in a way that operators can really adopt and launch to the market.

I believe it’s fair to say – we are all eager to meet again to continue with our fruitful IOT testing activity for VoLTE. Until then, the updates of our technical documents will be enhanced on our weekly IMTC IMS AG conference calls. If you are a member of the ITMC – you are invited to join us. If you are still not part of the IMTC family – this would be the time to join!

Bo Jönsson is a standardization manager of terminal testing at Ericsson AB.  In recent years he has worked with IMS standardization from a testing view. He has also been part of the IMTC IMS AG from its inception, in charge of the test specification document. As the host of the recent face-to-face interoperability event for VoLTE, he wanted to share some of his experiences.