I’m taking advantage of the quiet moment on the plane on my way to IT Expo in Miami to compose my thoughts – what will be happening at this year’s conference? You know, as someone who spent past 14 years building the IP Communication industry on all possible levels (at RADVISION, at IMTC and other consortiums), I’m both enjoying these quite moments (plane is almost last frontier of “quiet experience”) and dreading the potential loss of this last frontier – I think VoIP is closing on the aviation industry and soon there will be no escape from talking and chatting folks, even in the air…

Oh well, scary thoughts aside, what are my expectations of IT Expo? It is interesting to see how IT Expo grew into an assemblage of IP communication conferences – for the long time it goes way beyond SIP trunking and hosted telephony services (even though those can be still bread and butter of the IT Expo itself). There is very substantial number of conferences coming together under the umbrella of IT Expo – 4GWE (which stands for 4G Wireless Evolution), covering all aspects of 4G migration, and M2M (Machine to Machine communication – the name says it all), both developed from scratch by industry veteran and visionary Carl Ford, Cloud computing, HTML5 and more, plus a number of very good workshops and education programs.

I expect that video will be a topic of many discussions and presentations (finally!), spanning from traditional enterprise video conferencing, going to consumers, and then into Mobile and 4G. 4G wars (mild or not) are also inevitable – not so much LTE versus WiMax, may be, but definitely 4G versus Super WiFi. If you are also interested in Voice over LTE (VoLTE) – there will be a number of discussions just for you (this was not a prediction or expectation, just a fact).

Oh well, I will report back to you on the highlights (probably on my way back, utilizing one of my quiet moments), but for now, let me tell you where you can find me in case you also plan to be in Miami:

“When Does 4G Take Over Voice:  VoLTE Rollout” (4G-09)

WED 2/1, 1:30-2:15pm, ROOM #: A109

“The Case for Rich Communication Services: Maximizing Real Time Communications Revenue” (4G-11)

WED 2/1, 4:45-5:45pm, ROOM #: A109

“The Realities of Mobile Videoconferencing” (CC-08)

THU 2/2, 1:00-1:45pm, ROOM #: B211

Stop by and say “hi”, or may be even ask a difficult question – after all, conversation and a handshake are the best part of the conference, aren’t they?

Sagi Subocki, Head of IMS Segment at Radvision, and Sagee Ben-Zedeff, head of Video solutions, will conduct a VoLTE webinar, at Thursday, May 5, 2011, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT.

Among the webinar topics:

* LTE and IMS market and technology trends

* Challenges in building Next Generation core and endpoint devices

* Unique requirements for VoLTE

* Video and VoLTE

* RADVISION’s LTE solutions

Registration is open at the following link:

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/250078702

International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is pleased to announce that interoperability testing of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) will be one of the key focus areas during their flagship SuperOp! 2011 interoperability testing event in Kona, HI, May 15-20.  IMTC’s VoLTE testing will focus on terminals and core network interoperability.  IMTC invites all interested parties to participate in this engineering test event.

IMTC has a special area of interest with VoLTE testing. While other organizations may test VoLTE on network interfaces, IMTC has a keen focus for VoLTE testing on terminals and with the core network. This makes the IMTC SuperOp! 2011 testing event unique, and one of the few places to actually accomplish this level of engineer to engineer interoperability testing. A complete network inclusive of LTE access is being hosted by Huawei at the May 2011 SuperOp!, and IMTC is inviting all terminal companies to participate including ST-Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, LG, RIM and others, as well as Operators with interest in VoLTE.

At the June 2010 SuperOp!, participating companies included Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, LifeSize Communications, Nextreaming Corp., Nokia, NXP, Orange France Telecom, PacketVideo, Polycom, RADVISION, RealNetworks, TANDBERG Telecom, Vidiator Technology and Vidyo.

Full details including the ‘rules of engagement’ for this engineering only testing event can be found at the link above. This is a closed and confidential interoperability testing event, it is not a public event. Access to IMTC interoperability testing events is available to all IMTC member companies, and invited non-member companies who can contribute to the interop testing activities. IMTC member companies participate in ongoing development of the interoperability testing plans and specifications, organize and conduct face-to-face and virtual interoperability testing events on the regular basis, and provide feedback for improvements to national and international standardization bodies like ITU-T, 3GPP, IETF, GSMA and others.

SuperOp!, organized and conducted by the IMTC annually, is a significant event for the telecommunications, video conferencing and Telepresence sector. It brings together engineers from the leading companies developing unified communications, video communications products and services worldwide. The event includes equipment and service interoperability on combinations of IP networks, and covered a broad range of technologies such as HD Videoconferencing, Telepresence, mobile 3G-324M video, new 3G rate adaptation mechanisms in Packet Switch Streaming, SIP with BFCP and H.323 with H.239, and HTTP Live Streaming features.

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 more than 50 such events to test SIP, IMS, VoLTE, H.323, 3G-324M, 3G-PSS, Nat/Firewall Traversal, T.120, H .320, 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.

Contact: Anatoli Levine, IMTC President

alevine@radvision.com

Paul Ritchie, IMTC Executive Director

pritchie@inventures.com

2400 Camino Ramon, Suite #375

San Ramon, CA 94583

+1.925.275.6600

So the time is finally on. Long-planned and even postponed (thanks to the Iceland volcano with the unpronounceable name), IMTC SuperOp! 2010 is taking place in a small town of Jesi, near Ancona in Italy, June 14-18. Big Thank You to our hosts RADVISION Italy, Aethra.Net and Telecom Italia, as well as our sponsors Tandberg, Polycom, Cisco and Vidyo!

What is behind the name “SuperOp”, which sounds both big and cryptic at the same time? SuperOp!, a.k.a. “major interoperability event” is an annual gathering of IMTC member companies, getting together to conduct interoperability testing of IP Multimedia Communications solutions over one big network setting. Our First SuperOp!, took place in 1997, and then continued annually. SuperOp!’s goal is to help engineers to advance the level of interoperability of their companies’ products. Latest and greatest solutions, quite often include simply unreleased [yet] versions of software and hardware, that are tested for interoperability with each other. One can truly look at the SuperOp! as a giant development lab, where experts from the competing (sic!) companies work together to improve their products.

Is SuperOp! still relevant? It seems that interoperability is a key word, coming from every corner of the communications industry. From newly formed alliance, UCIF, which promises to focus on interoperability of unified communications, to the just announced Apple’s iPhone 4, which will provide video communications based on open standards, interoperability is a key topic for the whole industry. And interoperability is the major area where IMTC made the difference from day one – iNow profile and H.323 Forum Certification Program, numerous improvements in mobile video streaming standards and technologies, adapted by 3GPP, 3G-324M interoperability testing plans used by GCF as a foundation for certification program for mobile video telephony, MONA standardization in ITU-T, SIP Parity (video control enhancements over SIP)  definitions which are now making it into IETF, and latest efforts in the GSMA VoLTE and Telepresence multi-streaming and TIP – these are IMTC contributions into making technologies better in the practical hands-on terms.

So what will be happening at the SuperOp! 2010? First of all, there will be a lot of interoperability testing done in all of the Activity Groups – video conferencing using both SIP and H.323 (thanks to the year long hard work of the SIP Parity activity group, SIP-based video communication is becoming a reality), IP video streaming in PSS Activity Group, mobile video conferencing using 3G-324M. Then there will be a traditional SuperConnect – all-participants with all the video conferencing devices, always done on the last day of the event. In addition to this traditional activities, this year IMTC will also conduct Telepresence Workshop, where industry leaders from Cisco, Polycom, Vidyo, AT&T and others will present current state of affairs in the Telepresence Interoperability and lay out the plans to make Telepresence ubiquitously interoperable (audience poll: who thinks it is achievable, raise your hands J). All in all, we are looking at a busy week, a lot of work and a lot of fun! IMTC is open for every company interested in improving interoperability of their products (and enjoying the process at the same time!), so … c’mon over!

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.

One of the important aspects of an open standard is the ability to rigorously test it for interoperability. And then when you’re done testing – test yet again. It is an ongoing process that never seem to end.

Take our 3G-324M AG at the IMTC – I’ve been an active participant of this group from its inception, and that was over 5 years ago. And this year, the 3G-324M AG is going to have some more testing done – it seems like there is no rest for engineers.

So now that the GSMA has decided to go full force and work on the VoLTE specification so that operators can start rolling out all-IP mobile networks and still provide the basic services they do today, there was a missing piece in the puzzle – they have the ecosystem, but not real place to use for interoperability testing amongst the vendors implementing VoLTE.

That’s exactly where the IMTC comes into the picture – the IMTC is a place where interoperability testing of multimedia specifications is done. And we’re doing it for VoLTE as well – it’s what the IMTC IMS AG is doing these days.

We have a tentative plan moving forward, that I’d like to share with you here:

• Host 4 interoperability testing events in 2010 (1 down, 3 to go), roughly one in each quarter.
• Publish the first test specification document for VoLTE by June 2010.

The test events themselves are relatively straight forward – companies volunteer to host the event and other vendors within the IMS AG gather for testing.

The test specification document is where the real effort is made – we plan to align the specification between companies by publishing a thorough test specification document which can be used by QA teams within vendor companies and by service providers before going to market with their VoLTE products.

There’s a lot of work ahead of us, but as the IMTC has done this in the past, I am sure we will be able to do it again.

A few years ago, when it seemed apparent that all communications are moving to an IP based world, mobile operators had to decide on the standard to use in their all-IP world. SIP was selected for that purpose as the base protocol, with a lot of additional protocols taking part to comprise the whole network. The end result (which is an ongoing standardization effort) is IMS – the IP Multimedia Subsystem.
IMS was adopted by all other incumbent service providers – wireline, wireless and cable, which in a way made sure of continuity of service, interoperability and roaming between operators. Fun as it is, the problem with IMS is its complexity: it comes to replace a hundred years of developments in voice technologies, and wrap into their future network advanced services such as rich multimedia and presence.
And so it came to be that no operator to this date was capable of rolling out a full-fledged network in a commercial manner – at least not that I know of. There are a lot of IMS trials out there, but I don’t think any of them is really considerable enough to be treated as a valid service compared to what we’re used to in the good old circuit switched world.

So what do we have?

•    Complex technology – IMS
•    Carriers that have to replace their whole network – LTE, the 4G network has nothing but IP, so all voice communication over that network is pure IP
•    VoIP start ups breathing down the necks of service providers – promising to take their business

Enter One Voice

One Voice is a new initiative making its first major step today – getting adopted by the GSMA. Think of it as a narrowing of IMS to the bare minimum that a mobile service provider offers today to its customers (that would be voice and SMS). In a way, it translates the KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid) principle to IMS – it simplifies IMS to a point in which operators can start implementing and experimenting with it on a real network with a real ecosystem of vendors with interoperable solutions.
In essence, One Voice started by a group of companies, and now it has found a home at the GSMA, where it has been renamed to VoLTE, with a mission to define end-to-end service principles for Voice over LTE.
Why was this simplification in order? That’s because SIP (and IMS) have multiple ways of implementing each and every service, which makes interoperability between vendors quite challenging. So when you narrow down the scope, and indicate what is the exact way to implement something – it makes it easier to follow.
So what exactly can we find in the VoLTE draft specification? What problems does it solve?
•    Indication of what is mandatory and what is optional out of IMS
•    Registration to the network, including authentication and signaling compression
•    Dialing out and accepting incoming voice calls
•    Sending and receiving SMS messages
•    Supplementary services to calls (identification of caller/callee, privacy of identification, call diversion, call barring, hold, message waiting and conference calls)
And that’s the initial draft. VoLTE is an ongoing effort that will grow with time, encompassing more services that will get deployed by service providers. While the VoLTE public draft isn’t available yet, it’s basis is the One Voice specification which is available online (PDF) – if you are dealing with VoIP, SIP, IMS or service provisioning, then you should probably take a look at it.

I’ve written in two other places about One Voice, before it became VoLTE – you might want to check them out as well:
•    The One Voice Initiative (No Jitter)
•    How Will Operators Kill Them Mobile VoIP Startups? (VoIP Survivor)