A recent survey among carriers with IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) core equipment in their networks, by the leading market research firm Infonetics Research unveils that 83% of carriers will deploy voice over LTE (VoLTE) by 2016. This is a sharp increase from the mere 3% today, driving the IMS deployments.
Infonetics via its 2014 IMS Service Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey, also found that among the top factor driving IMS deployments is the ability to offer converged services over multiple access methods, with carriers planning to implement IMS networks in an NFV environment within 2 years.
Another interesting note from the finding is that the fixed-line voice over IP (VoIP) service will drive the majority of IMS deployments, with 100% of survey respondents planning to have business and/or residential VoIP services running over IMS by 2016.
“Among carriers participating in our latest IMS study, it’s clear that although voice over LTE (VoLTE) is the largest driver for IMS, it also presents new challenges such as a limited set of compatible handsets and a weak business case. It’ll be tough to justify spending capital on a new network for just voice that represents flat-to-declining revenue, requiring providers to look well beyond running voice over IMS.”
- Diane Myers, Principal Analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS, Infonetics Research
