Infonetics Research projects that the VoLTE revenue is expected to reach around $3 billion by 2017, while VoLTE subscribers will be around $160 million during the period.
The number of global LTE subscribers is expected to more than quadruple to 755 million between 2013 and 2017, and the number of VoLTE subscribers to grow 17-fold during this same period, said Infonetics Research.
“The mobile broadband industry’s rapid migration to LTE has opened the door to malicious and non-malicious threats due to fundamental vulnerabilities in the all-IP LTE architecture. As the adoption of IPsec encryption for transporting LTE traffic continues to grow significantly, there is increasing need for security gateways,” said Stephane Teral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.
Recently, Heavy Reading research revealed that more than 70 percent of operators believe their existing policy control systems will require additional features or upgrades to meet the stringent requirements for VoLTE.
Graham Finnie, chief analyst at Heavy Reading, said: “Specialized policy solutions that can co-exist with legacy PCRFs will allow operators to leverage existing investments, and could give them a time to market advantage for VoLTE service introduction.”
Infonetics earlier said the global policy management software market reached just over $1 billion in 2013 and is on target to become a $2.5 billion market by 2018, with mobile deployments driving much of the momentum.
VoLTE continues to be a major driver behind policy management growth as operators seek to ensure quality of service (QoS) for voice traffic.
VoLTE to gain momentum in Africa, America, Asia
ABI Research earlier said African LTE cellular subscriptions are projected to multiply at a CAGR of 128 per cent to surpass 50 million by end-2018. Nearly half are expected to be able to use VoLTE services.
American telecoms are focusing on VoLTE, but subscribers are clueless about benefits. In the U.S., MetroPCS became the nation’s first telecom operator to launch VoLTE via the LG Connect smartphone in 2012.
Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility position VoLTE to better customer experience for their subscribers.
SK Telecom and LG Uplus in South Korea have also launched VoLTE.
Juniper Research said with the arrival of 4G, most MNOs will adopt VoLTE, increasing their network efficiency, though direct revenues will be limited.
Dell’Oro Group, a telecom market research agency, expects significant expansion of VoLTE services in North America in 2014, after the initial 2013 launches in Korea and Japan. The implementation of these services has already driven hundreds of millions of dollars of capital spending.
Chris DePuy, vice president of Carrier IP Telephony research at Dell’Oro Group, said: “We expect other regions, including Western Europe and China to be drivers to similar capital spending in the next year.”
The overall carrier IP Telephony market, which includes devices used to serve both circuit switched subscribers, Voice over IP (VoIP) and Voice over LTE subscribers, topped $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter 2013.
China Mobile, the largest telecom operator in the world, is aggressive in the LTE 4G space. To verify the performance of VoLTE in its TD-LTE network, China Mobile recently set up parallel VoLTE trial projects with several mobile broadband equipment vendors in different parts of the country.
Broadband network vendor NSN completed the first TDD eSRVCC video call on January 4, 2014, and an extensive set of tests on January 29, 2014, to demonstrate the benefits of providing voice services as an integral part of the LTE network.
A video call made in an LTE network that utilizes eSRVCC allows a high-definition (HD) call that is established in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) over VoLTE and then handed over to 2G/3G using voice continuity. This means the voice portion of the call can continue seamlessly even if 4G coverage is no longer available, said NSN.
VoLTE space is facing security related challenges. Infonetics Research says there is an increasing need for security in VoLTE networks and presents solutions for mobile operators looking to prevent unauthorized access into the evolved packet core (EPC) and enhance the quality of experience of VoLTE services.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
