How is the VoLTE development of the three major operators?

There are always various opportunities for industrial development, and 5G and the Internet of Things are undoubtedly the most anticipated opportunities in the industry. Therefore, operators have a lot to do: 4G, broadband, 5G, the Internet of Things, etc., and they also have to be busy with transformation.

But it seems that VoLTE is rarely mentioned because there has been no new progress. So, to what extent have operators developed VoLTE?

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China Mobile: The number of users has exceeded 250 million

Last month, China Mobile released a single-source centralized procurement announcement for VoLTE IP SMS gateway equipment (capacity expansion) for 2018-2019. It is reported that China Mobile will purchase 36 sets of IP SMS gateways (IP-SM-GW) from ZTE.

As of December 2017, the number of VoLTE users in China Mobile's entire network has exceeded 250 million, and VoLTE users account for 30.9% of 4G; there are more than 600 terminals supporting VoLTE and 29 chip platforms.

In addition, China Mobile's VoLTE uses pure IPv6 access.

China Telecom: Commercial use within 2018

Recently, China Telecom announced the prequalification announcement for the new VoLTE vIMS network construction project in 2018. It is reported that this new construction project is to meet the VoLE service needs of 31 million mobile vIMS users and 8.47 million IoT users nationwide by the end of 2018.

In April this year, at the China SDN/NFV Conference, China Telecom stated that it would deploy vIMS networks in 6 nodes across the country in 2018, which would meet the needs of 31 million VoLTE users across the network by the end of 2018. It is reported that the country is divided into three regions: North, Central and South. Two node networks in the same region are mutually backup. Considering the special needs of Xinjiang, a separate Xinjiang node is set up, which is only responsible for Xinjiang's business and is included in the Central Region. At the same time, in order to meet the principle of intensive operation: to support the needs of intensive operation of mobile services and realize "one-point acceptance, one-point connection, and one-point charging", Xinjiang VoLTE IMS network is built in accordance with regional deployment.

Previously, China Telecom publicly responded to the media that VoLTE high-definition calls have been internally tested, and China Telecom's official commercial VoLTE is coming soon, with plans to achieve it within the year.

In terms of terminals, China Telecom put forward requirements for terminals last year: terminal manufacturers must support 800M from October 1, 2017; models priced above RMB 1,000 must support VoLTE from October 1, 2017, and models priced above RMB 3,000 must support dual-SIM dual VoLTE from April 1, 2018; and terminals that support NB-IoT will be open for testing in July 2017.

Lu Liangjun, deputy general manager of the marketing department of China Telecom Group, also pointed out in February this year that "China Telecom will fully launch the All Netcom 3.0 version in 2018. The most important part of All Netcom 3.0 is the upgrade of VoLTE."

China Unicom: Network capabilities to be available in the fourth quarter of 2018

China Unicom plans to strive to achieve the goal of recruiting friendly customers by the end of the year and full commercial use in 2019.

At the beginning of 2016, Henan Unicom's VoLTE network was put into trial commercial use, becoming the first province among all China Unicom's pilot projects to complete all tests; during the 2017 Mobile World Congress Shanghai, China Unicom, Ericsson and Qualcomm jointly announced: the first successful application demonstration of VoLTE function based on eMTC (CAT-M1) in the world.

At the end of last year, some Beijing Unicom users discovered that the VoLTE function is now available on some Android phones that support this function. The "HD" logo is displayed in the phone status bar, and VoLTE can be used to make calls normally. The network remains in 4G status during the call.

At the "2018 China Unicom Partner Conference and Communications Information Terminal Trade Fair", China Unicom stated that VoLTE will have network capabilities in the fourth quarter of this year.

On July 10 this year, Zhejiang Unicom successfully made the first VoLTE voice call and a VoLTE video call in the Binjiang Building 2 computer room, marking a key step for Zhejiang Unicom towards its goal of commercializing VoLTE in 2019.