Ericsson has dropped its support for the VoLGA Forum, which promotes Voice over LTE via Generic Access, dealing a blow to the voice-over-LTE approach a little more than a month after the vendor signalled its enthusiasm for a different standard.
Erik Ekudden, Ericsson's vice president of technology and industry, said that when the VoLGA Forum was established earlier this year "we had the impression that VoLGA would become a global solution." However, "there are no signs that it [VoLGA] will be strongly supported" by mobile operators, he said in an interview with Unstrung.
"Of course we will support it if required, but now there is more acceleration for support for packet-based voice--that's where there is big momentum," Ekudden said.
Indeed, the VOLGA approach is championed by only T-Mobile International. In contrast, last month Ericsson joined several prominent vendors as well as Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera and Vodafone in supporting an approach called One Voice, which is an IMS-based take on voice for LTE networks. At the time, Ericsson said its support for One Voice did not necessarily mean it was dropping support for VoLGA--a stance now changed.
The VoLGA Forum, meanwhile, seemed to take the loss of the world's largest equipment vendor in stride. The organization said it could not comment on why Ericsson left, and that it would continue to work on the next stage of technical specifications for VoLGA.
For more:
- see this Unstrung article
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