LTE is driving new IMS deployments as operators gear up to launch future Rich Communication Suite and voice over LTE services, according to market research firm Infonetics Research
The firm's recent survey of 21 incumbent, mobile, competitive, and cable operators around the world with IMS core equipment in, or being deployed in, their networks revealed that the IMS market is being dramatically impacted by the expansion of mobile services. By 2014, 71 percent of respondent operators intend to offer Rich Communication Suite enhanced (RCS-e) services, more than half plan to offer VoLTE and about a third will offer VoIP over 3G and mobile messaging.
"For the first time ever, LTE is the top driver for IMS deployments in our annual IMS service provider survey," said Diane Myers, Infonetics principal analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics. Nonetheless, she said the majority of services running over IMS today are fixed-line VoIP, and none of the survey respondents has yet deployed VoLTE. "Ultimately, the longer-term inevitability of an all-IP mobile network is leading operators to IMS for other services first, even if VoLTE services are farther down the road," she added.
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Source: Infonetics Research |
A separate report also recently released by Infonetics tapped the United States and South Korea as leading the push toward VoLTE. According to the report, while the first VoLTE deployments will take place in the second half of this year, Infonetics believes there will be 300,000 VoLTE subscribers globally by year's-end.
Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) is still the leading IMS vendor in terms of equipment installed by operators responding to Infonetics' survey but Huawei is closing in. "Huawei is a real standout in this year's survey, growing its installed base every year among survey respondents and topping the vendor leadership list for pricing, total cost of ownership, product roadmap, financial stability, and reliability," the research firm added.
For more:
- see this Infonetics release
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