Thursday, September 17, 2009 4:00am EDT
CHICAGO--(Business Wire)--
The VoLGA Forum announced today it has published the first complete set of
approved specifications for delivering mobile voice and SMS messaging services
over LTE access networks. The VoLGA documents are available for download at
VoLGA-Forum.com.
"The VoLGA Forum member companies have worked hard to rapidly complete the
specifications, accomplishing the work in less than nine months," said Uwe
Janssen, senior vice president, T-Mobile core networks at Deutsche Telekom. "We
are pleased with the broad industry support for the VoLGA effort, and look
forward to upcoming product releases from the vendor community."
VoLGA, or Voice over LTE via Generic Access, will enable mobile operators to:
* Bring voice and SMS services over LTE radio access networks and femtocells
* Support new revenue-generating applications over LTE, such as IMS
combinational services and the Rich Communications Suite (RCS)
* Provide an improved overall user experience capitalizing on the performance
advantages of LTE
* Navigate a smooth transition to IMS telephony
* Launch data-only LTE devices (USB dongles, netbooks, etc.) leveraging the
existing SMS-based customer care applications such as remote device management,
configuration updates and SMS-based service announcements
"VoLGA presents a viable way forward that doesn`t require a re-architecture of
the network. VoLGA potentially provides LTE operators with a low-cost method of
getting voice and SMS-the two highest drivers of mobile revenues-onto LTE," said
Brian Partridge, research director at Yankee Group. "One of the reasons you
haven`t seen a lot of operators get behind VoLGA is because they are currently
vetting a number of different solutions and gain nothing by publicly backing
VoLGA at this stage in LTE's development. The work of the VoLGA Forum and the
support of much of the LTE eco-system and T-Mobile will go a long way to ensure
VoLGA gets a shot at providing the bridge that many LTE committed operators will
require on the road to IMS."
The VoLGA Forum has 21 member companies including Alcatel-Lucent, Deutsche
Telekom, Ditech Networks, GENBAND, HTC, Huawei, Kineto Wireless, LG Electronics,
Mavenir, Motorola, Nortel, Samsung, Sonus, Starent Networks, Tecore Networks,
Ulticom, WiChorus and ZTE.
For more information about VoLGA, please visit www.volga-forum.com. For
companies interested in participating in the VoLGA Forum, please contact
info@volga-forum.com.
Deutsche Telekom AG
Silke Armann, +49 (0) 228 936 15227
silke.armann@telekom.de
or
Kineto Wireless
Steve Shaw, +1-408-965-0209
sshaw@kineto.com
Copyright Business Wire 2009
