Is mobile ready for the hottest volte business

Volte commercial, is China Mobile ready

in these two days, mobile companies in Zhejiang and Liaoning provinces successively announced the implementation of volte commercial and trial commercial, and China Mobile has made another big step towards comprehensively promoting volte commercial

similar to 4g+, voice over LTE (voiceover LTE) is an important evolution form of 4G network. With this technology, the 4G network, which originally only provides data functions, has the function of call, which enables 4G to realize easy call without the help of 2g/3g network, that is, it can also realize 4G high-speed network during call, which is a new and more convenient experience for our customers

Li Zhengmao, vice president of China Mobile, once said that China Mobile is accelerating the commercial process of volte. It is expected that all cities will be ready for commercial use in December this year. Cities will start commercial use one after another to provide users with higher quality and lower price call services. This is the first time in two years that China Mobile has defined the commercial rhythm of volte as succession, which means that when the tear line always deviates by 10mm, it means that China Mobile's full-scale commercial volte before the end of the year has become a firm fact

but judging from the situation of all parties, if China Mobile wants to successfully realize the full volte business, it needs to do at least the following three aspects of preparation

full coverage is not enough, but also high-quality indoor coverage

it can support the concurrency and integration of voice and data based on LTE, mobile and fixed IMS core, without 2g/3g, all services are carried on the 4G network, which can realize the unification of data and voice services under the same network, with higher spectrum utilization, lower voice call cost, support the integration of video multimedia and other services, and can significantly improve the user experience, Accelerate the LTE migration of users from 2G and 3G networks to 4G era. This standard, as a compulsory national standard, will become a sharp weapon for basic operators to compete with Ott free voice. Therefore, for China Mobile, to realize volte, we must first try to implement the full coverage of TD-LTE

the fatal thing is that volte can guarantee satisfactory voice quality only when the signal level is above -80dbm. Most voice calls occur indoors. For mobile LTE band, a wall may attenuate 20dB. Therefore, only full coverage in the ordinary sense is not enough, and high-quality and high-density indoor coverage is also required, which undoubtedly greatly increases the workload of mobile. Of course, it is a great advantage for indoor coverage solution providers such as small base stations

at the same time, we should also consider that there will be some places that cannot be covered by LTE. In these areas that cannot be covered by LTE, voice fallback is required. This fallback is different from CSFB, but requires the

function to ensure the continuity of the volte application layer and the continuity of handoff between wireless access

at the same time, volte must also have corresponding terminal coordination. Since June this year, domestic terminals have accelerated the pace of launching volte. GSA announced last month that there are 219 volte enabled terminals, including 198 smart ones. However, considering the constraints of low-end users, the volte business process cannot be achieved overnight, but may be a long process. A good news from the industrial chain is that with the introduction of more volte supporting chips, especially low-end and medium-end chips, it is expected that more low-end and medium-end 4G with volte function at a price of 1000 yuan will appear in the future, which will accelerate the development of the whole volte industry

billing issues are fundamental to operators

billing issues are fundamental to operators and should not be ignored. Volte will bring a new problem of billing: charging by traffic or charging on time

logically, since volte uses traffic completely, it seems inappropriate to charge according to the length of time. It should be charged according to traffic completely

for users, it is no different from ordinary voice calls. Operators use volte to provide high-definition voice user experience with higher QoS quality. It is more to attract users through better services than to directly charge high fees for the business and bring revenue growth

but this brings a new risk. If the new traffic cost (revenue for operators) brought by volte cannot match the part of revenue brought by the original voice call, it will lead to a decline in the revenue of operators, which no operator can bear

at present, the charging methods of volte selected by leading international operators vary according to their respective market and business conditions. First, volte voice and messages are provided free of charge as part of the traffic package. For example, North American operators at t, Verizon and sprint all adopt this billing method. The second is to keep the charging of volte voice consistent with that of traditional voice, and adopt the charging of time waiting for confirmation, with messages as a part of the traffic package. Japanese operators NTTDoCoMo, KDDI, Softbank and Korean operators SK Telecom, Korea Telecom and lgu+ all adopt this billing method. Third, volte voice and SMS are charged by traffic. At present, no operator has taken this approach

it is not difficult to find that at present, more commercial volte operators adopt a more realistic strategy, PCU is more stable under medical conditions, that is, volte technology takes the flow, but the billing still follows the old method. If the local or domestic voice in the previous high monthly package is free, it will continue to be free; If the previous voice is billed according to the length of time, it will continue to be billed according to the length of time, but the traffic consumed by this part of volte billed according to the length of time will be deducted from the traffic billing

in the long run, most operators may adopt the unlimited strategy of dialogue voice and volte under the high monthly package, that is, they will not charge extra for their own or domestic

this should be the general trend, and South Korea has gone in this direction

sniper Ott also needs careful design.

the reason why China Mobile is so active in developing volte is that volte not only shoulders the key task of converging communication, but also carries the dream of 4G completely replacing 2G and even 3G in the future. It can be described as the real battle of Tianwang mountain. According to the latest GSA report, 103 operators have invested in the deployment, testing or research of volte in 49 countries, and 25 operators in 16 countries have commercialized volte HD voice services. In the multi coexisting network environment, China Mobile's upcoming full commercial volte can prove to operators around the world that TD-LTE has an end-to-end complete and commercially available mobile communication system, and will once again change and even lead the development trend of the chip and terminal industry pattern. In addition, China Mobile has another meaning that it is inconvenient to say clearly, that is, to compete with Ott with volte

at present, the development of similar Internet applications has seriously threatened the traditional business model of operators. In order to meet the challenges of interconnected applications, operators have launched integrated communication. As one of the core technologies of integrated communication, volte has the advantages of never dropping lines, low delay and high-definition calls, and has become a powerful weapon for operators to fight back against Ott services

facing the challenge of Ott, operators need to come up with interconnected communication services with carrier level service quality to regain user stickiness. Volte is a key step in the transformation of Internet for operators. Users will use this when they have no more choices. Once they have a new choice, the living space based on Internet call services such as this will be compressed. Volte also solves one of the pain points of current 4G users, that is, the inability to connect. As a new value business, volte video call will bring revenue growth to operators

at the same time, China Mobile's positioning of volte cannot be just an app that provides voice call function. Industry insiders suggested that in order to cope with the changing forms of Ott business, operators also need to combine the advantages of volte, consider the integration and innovation of volte, games, social networking and other businesses, provide voice mail, roaming, Internet and other services that Ott is difficult to provide, divert users' attention from Ott business, and improve the value of unit traffic