5G Americas, an industry trade association expects that in a few years, both Voice over LTE(VoLTE) and Video over LTE(ViLTE) will form the backbone of IP-based telecommunications just as voice was an integral part of 2G and 3G networks.
"3GPP Communications Services such as VoLTE, ViLTE, HD Voice and RCS are gaining momentum throughout the world as operators continue to invest heavily in their networks to provide excellent services to their customers," commented Chris Pearson, President of 5G Americas.
VoLTE is a technology that enables High Definition (HD) voice call quality among other quality of service benefits for operators and their customers, while ViLTE provides high quality video service by typically offering lower latency and higher capacity compared to competing Over-the-Top(OTT) services which utilize best-effort bearers that can adversely affect the quality. These services are able to provide, amongst others, regulatory-required services such as E-911.
First launched in 2012, VoLTE has made progress through the years and is now being rapidly deployed in many parts of the world. Operators in North America are among the early adopters of VoLTE. At the same time, ViLTE is also experiencing increased adoption around the globe.
According to 5G Americas, operators deploying VoLTE will also tend to deploy RCS messaging, an evolution to legacy SMS and MMS as another step in their migration to future all-IP networks. Similar to VoLTE, RCS messaging takes advantage of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) control capabilities, encompassing a rich multimedia service portfolio, including multimedia messaging, chat, file transfer, privacy, buddy lists and presence. RCS introduces an important all-IP communication evolution enabler in capability discovery. The end user will always be aware of who in their contact book is able to communicate using new services. Furthermore, RCS messaging natively integrated into Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) devices and chipsets offers a seamless out-of-box experience to the end-user.
