4G LTE Cellular To Speak With 2 Voices

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 11/4/2009

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Dallas - Major cellular carriers, handset vendors, and infrastructure worldwide agreed on another international standard to add voice calling and SMS text messaging to the 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular-data standard, which uses the Internet Protocol (IP) to deliver high-speed data.

The VoiceOne standard, endorsed by 12 companies, competes with the VoLGA (Voice over LTE via Generic Access) standard, approved in September by the 21 handset vendors, infrastructure makers and carriers in the VoLGA Forum. The forum members are Alcatel-Lucent, carrier Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), Ditech Networks, GENBAND, HTC, Huawei, Kineto Wireless, LG Electronics, Mavenir, Motorola, Nortel, Samsung, Sonus, Starent Networks, Tecore Networks, Ulticom, WiChorus and ZTE.

Only 12 companies have endorsed the VoiceOne standard, but they include more carriers than VoLGA's Deutsche Telekom. Carriers endorsing VoiceOne are AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, and Vodafone. Infrastructure companies endorsing VoiceOne are Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens Networks. Supporting handset vendors are Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

A voice-over-LTE standard will help carriers boost data and voice capacity by migrating consumers from more bandwidth-eating circuit-switched voice technologies, and it will help guarantee international roaming and interoperability for LTE voice and SMS services. In Verizon Wireless filed trials, LTE has delivered peak data rates of 50-60Mbps

VoiceOne is based on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) defined by an international group called the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project). IMS is a standard that works on both a broadband wireline network and a wireless network.

Verizon plans to launch LTE in its 700MHz spectrum in 25 to 30 markets in 2010 and cover virtually all of its current nationwide 3G footprint with LTE by the end of 2013, the company said.