SoftBank Mobile has signed a VoLTE (voice over LTE) deal with telecom equipment vendor Ericsson.
As part of the 4G deal, Ericsson will supply and integrate SoftBank Mobile’s mobile network solution for VoLTE.
Financial details of the deal are not disclosed.
Also, both companies did not share additional details of the VoLTE launch plans.
Ericsson’s VoLTE solution will offer subscribers High Definition (HD) voice and video calling, and new enriched multimedia services.
The Ericsson VoLTE infrastructure will serve as the basis for SoftBank’s future network virtualization plans and Telecom Cloud introduction, and achieve more efficient spectrum utilization in the network, Ericsson said.
Junichi Miyakawa, CTO of SoftBank Mobile, said the mobile service provider decided to introduce VoLTE as the next generation communication technology for voice and video calling over LTE. It hopes to deliver quality communication in a fast and cost-efficient manner by utilizing Ericsson’s VoLTE solution.
As part of the contract, Ericsson is upgrading SoftBank Mobile’s existing mobile core network (Ericsson Mobile Softswitch Solution and Evolved Packet Core) with a complete IMS core, which includes the Multimedia Telephony Application Server (MTAS). SoftBank Mobile’s Ericsson-based LTE network is also being upgraded with new VoLTE software.
