Huawei, KPN and China Mobile have held the “industry’s first” Voice over LTE (VoLTE) roaming call between Europe and Asia.
Huawei said high-fidelity voice and video capabilities were “successfully tested” during the IMS-based call between KPN and China Mobile, as both operators prepare for commercial VoLTE rollouts in their respective territories.
The call was connected using KPN’s iBasis exchange service, which supports signalling and media interworking between both VoLTE and non-VoLTE networks via a single connection to its multi-service Internet Packet Exchange (IPX).
According to KPN, iBasis provides a “robust” testing ground for VoLTE interconnections by supporting both local breakout and home roaming IMS technology, allowing operators to bring VoLTE roaming to hundreds of destination countries around the world.
Huawei said the latest results “provided a strong foundation for long distance communication.”
Long Jiping, Vice President at Huawei Core Network, commented: “Huawei is committed to promoting commercial VoLTE deployment globally. We feel honoured to cooperate with KPN and China Mobile to complete this call. As 4G evolves Huawei will continue to work with both operators to stimulate a smooth network evolution from 3G. This will bring higher quality service experience to their users.”
Earlier this month, Nokia Networks and du achieved the first commercial VoLTE call in the Middle East, using technology based on the vendor’s Liquid Core IMS tech.
Nokia claimed it was “the world’s fastest implementation” of the technology after integrating it into du’s LTE network in 80 days.
In June, Infonetics forecast the number of VoLTE users to surpass 50 million this year, however operators are struggling to see decent returns on the technology.
Read more: