Coalition of carriers, manufacturers settles on voice standard for LTE
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Nov 4th 2009 11:41AM
posted Nov 4th 2009 11:41AM
As much fanfare and support as it's been getting over the past couple years, LTE's dirty little secret is that there's been no unified stance on how to ferry voice services over the technology; the concentration has been on data alone so far. Sure, the occasional carrier has raised concerns -- and a variety of solutions have been proposed, ranging from VoIP to repurposing legacy networks for voice alone -- but until now, voice has been an afterthought that everyone's been procrastinating on solving. Fortunately, a veritable who's-who of industry players from both the manufacturer and carrier sides of the fence have congealed this week to announce the One Voice initiative, which basically just hand-picks existing 3GPP-defined standards for voice and SMS services over LTE. Strangely missing is T-Mobile, one of the loudest voices in demanding a voice standard for LTE up until this point -- but considering that AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, and Vodafone are all on board along with Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and others, we think they'll have no option but to fall in line in the long term. For consumers, this means we can all breathe a sigh of relief that LTE handsets won't be arbitrarily compartmentalized by supported voice standard, so it's a big win any way you slice it.
You can't "repurpose" something, just as you can't "reintention" something.
That's interesting, because I just described something being repurposed in this post.
"To use or convert for use in another format or product"
Umm yea you can. I can repurpose a lawn mower into an industrial fan for example.
Yes, you can.
"To reuse for a different purpose, on a long-term basis; To alter to make more suited for a different purpose"
The current generation of data/voice networks are being reused as a voice only network...
I assume your objection is that "purpose" in a noun. But "purpose" is also a verb. It means exactly what you think it does.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/purpose
No, you don't "repurpose" something. You reuse it. We already have a word that means what you're trying to say.
Again, you can't "reintention" something either, nor even "reintend" something.
Defending incorrect grammar and finding others who do does not make it correct; it makes you a lazy illiterate who'd rather bring down the quality of our communication than clean up your own.
"Repurpose" was added to Merriam-Webster in 1984. I'm afraid that gives it authority that considerably outstrips your own anachronistic view of the language.
Apparently you need a new dictionary old man
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repurposed
Main Entry: re·pur·pose
Pronunciation: \(ˌ)rē-ˈpər-pəs\
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1984
: to give a new purpose or use to
Seems to have been added by Merriam Webster 25 years ago.
Information Central is an idiot. Might as well call himself "Acme," 'cause all of his information is defective.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repurpose
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/repurpose
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=define+repurpose&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=b1cbbff37876d0fa
It was also added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1984, of which there is no higher authority as to whether a word is a real word or not.
An argument could be made that 'repurpose' is not the correct word, however. Generally speaking, repurposing is usually indicative of the original purpose or use being lost for good. In this case, it would be easy to re-enable data on the legacy networks. Perhaps utilized would be a more appropriate word?
That said, at that point we would be arguing grammatical semantics, and that's entirely unnecessary. Real word, used in an arguably correct context, you win a cookie!
I say that if the Oxford English Dictionary calls it a word, it's a word. Your opinion on the subject is of considerably less significance.
Finally but we all need them to get LTE up and running asap i want my world phone plz.
So will this transcend the differences between GSM and CDMA ...thereby allowing your phone to work on verizon, sprint, att, tmobile, etc with one radio? Or will each carrier have different frequencies, etc. ?
Someone with great knowledge on this subject, please enlighten me!
I heArd that verizon is pushing for a universal early termination fee of $350 for all carriers. I guess cuz droid does.
That would be illegal. Ever heard of a little something called price fixing?
Verizon IS indeed in course of increasing the early termination fee to $350 for "advanced phones"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/181385/Verizon_To_Double_Wireless_Early_Termination_Fee.html?tk=rss_news
tikiteko: yeah, we realize that. that's still not a *universal* termination fee. price fixing is when a bunch of people get together to charge one price (one termination fee) so that customers have no choice but to pay the (usually exorbinant) price.
Correct. I hope that never goes in place. Anyways ETF are something up to each carrier. Like how much they charge for each phone.
For real... I think phone should become like computers. You buy it at the store and you can use it with whomever provider you want. I am pretty sure that wireless service will become streamlines and "cheap" in the near future - that is a no brainer seeing the growth of the market. I think then, we would be able to get cool phones without thinking GSM or CDMA? Would it come to T-Mobile? AT&T? I hope LTE gives us access to that.
I know the current benefit is subsidizing but look at the T-Mobile experiment, you can go prepaid, no contract, buy the phone retail prize and you practically end up paying the same as month to month on a contract.
The rest of the world is basically like that with GSM. If you are in Europe, you can go out and buy any phone and be safe it will work with the carrier of your choice. And Europe will still be that way with LTE, but even here in America with Verizon switching from CDMA to GSM's adopted LTE standard, you will still have Sprint and other small carriers that will stick with propietary versions of CDMA and move on to WiMax to supplement data coverage.
Device interoperability is a very good thing. This will make the carriers really complete for business. If I can buy my phone from anyone and use it anywhere else, they're going to have to differentiate themselves another way.
Granted, I probably wouldn't buy phones any more often than I do now, or switch carriers from Verizon, but choice is always good.
One thing you might want to take note of is that WiMax and LTE are so similar to each other that carriers have said that all a switch would require is a firmware upgrade, not a whole replacement of hardware.
We don't need voice anymore. People running these networks need to shut up and fall in line. Give me a data connection everywhere I go and let me do whatever I want with it. Maybe that's voip, maybe thats http, ftp, torrent, etc. Stop pushing your "standards" as something other than greed instruments.
Might work for you and I, but my parents and grandparents would fail miserably if they had to set up VOIP to get their device to make calls. Try that comment again in like 50 years and I think it will be more practical.
There's nothing saying you can't use a device setup specifically to make voip over your nice data connection easy if you're allowed to use whatever device you want.
Sometimes, it's nice to actually talk to people.
r3loaded: Agreed, and with a technology such as voip we can talk over a data connection. I would like the option to talk by as many methods as possible. Currently we have carriers with a chosen method, which works fine, but we also have carriers that charge for using that method, and try to block other methods because they can't make money off them. Pay for your connection, do what you want with it afterwards.
So explain to me how, without standards, you plan to use voip?
Because voip operates over standards. H.323 or G.711 are the most common. HTTP is a standard, FTP is a standard, torrent is a standard.
You seem to be confused as to what a standard actually is. It's a definition of how to pass information between two devices. Without them establishing standards, you may be locked into only using your Nokia phone to talk to other Nokia phones.
Or, going back to your data example, how exactly are you going to use any of those data applications without a standard for the device to communicate with the network?
In short, you're an idiot.
@outphase
I think the word you are looking for is protocol not standard, maybe the same thing.
@outphase84: It was not my intention to imply that standards are bad, but why do we need a voice standard when our data networks are cheaper to run voice on top of? These new technologies are obviously progressing data capabilities, not voice.
Lets say our standard for delivering liquids is a bottle. We can put juice, milk, beer, whatever you want in a bottle. Why do you need to use a jug to hold water? I think it's so someone can sell you a jug.
Lets say our standard for delivering data is LTE. We can deliver voip, http, ftp, whatever you want on LTE. Why do you need to use standardX to deliver voice? I think it's so someone can sell you standardX.
@Jeff
In the long term future, you may be right and we should be able to use data for everything including voice.
But, the LTE network for most companies won't provide full coverage for many years, especially in a huge country like the US. So, operators will still need legacy networks for users to fall back on if they are out of LTE range. I'm not sure how good Skype would work if you switched from LTE to UMTS or EDGE... (esp with the iPhone hammering AT&T's network.)
As the article states, one of the technologies being discussed to be that voice standard is voip already.
If they're going to market voice service that is in fact voip alongside data service, consumers have already lost the war.
@Jeff:
A few things here to consider. The first is that there may be more efficient ways to process certain types of traffic over the radio. If operating a GSM backend for voice communication utilizes less spectrum per call, you increase your capacity and lower your costs. A company would be stupid to not explore those options.
Second, there are multiple standards that VoIP can operate on. If you don't standardize this at the network level, you run into interoperability problems. Additionally, if you use proprietary standards, you then have licensing issues to deal with. Assuming we want to avoid that, we go with SIP, which is the open standard. However, how well suited is SIP for a mobile device? Not very. Without getting into heavy details, most VoIP standards and protocols are assuming we have a device that is on constant power. In order for the mobile phone to be able to receive calls, we need it to have a persistent IP, and maintain constant keepalive with the server. Works fine in theory (although in practice, it doesn't work so well, as most IP set manufacturers deviate from the standard and cause issues, but that's another story), but in a mobile device it would end up being a HUGE drain on battery life.
The problem is, existing VoIP standards are designed assuming direct IP connectivity to the endpoint at all times. There are no provisions for a signaling channel to alert the device that there is an inbound call and to initiate its IP connections. It's something that could be created and bundled in with an existing standard, but if we're going to the trouble to now create something new, why not create the most efficient possible?
The third issue is the assumption that if the carriers went with VoIP, that calls would be unlimited and we would just use our big fancy data bucket. Unfortunately, it's quite easy to track RTP streams and bill according to the minutes used. There are tons of call accounting and call recording systems that do just that. I would know -- I install and maintain VoIP and TDM phone systems, and call accounting systems on a daily basis.
The only way around this would be using odd port numbers, different protocols than the network is standardized on, etc. But then we run into the issue of interoperability -- how well will that work when you can't call anyone else on the network?
I apologize for calling you an idiot, your response showed some actual thinking going on, moreso than just another internet whiner.
@outphase84: Voip is just one of the options for carrying voice information over data networks, and since you have already begun to adapt it's current pitfalls to a new application I want to say that these multi-billion dollar companies can think it over and overcome the problem areas you mention. There's always a certain risk of having to modify or update something in order to get it going on something completely new. That's where voip experts (like yourself) come in and make their livings.
As for using an existing GSM backend to help lower costs, increase efficiency and whatever else, it sounds strangely similar to a service already put in place by these exact companies: text messaging. Put in place after the fact, specifically designed to be efficient, cheap, etc and is extremely well documented as being one of the most outrageously overcharged aspects of the entire mobile realm. What makes you think it wouldn't happen with voice?
@Jeff:
See, that's the thing. Regardless of what technology gets used for voice, they will be able to monitor and bill accordingly. Whether they use a GSM core, SIP, MiNet, Cisco SCCP, they will be able to monitor it and bill for the number of minutes used. The only way around this, as I said, is using encryption, non-standard ports, non-standard protocols, etc. But the issue there is that we kill interoperability of devices. Without interoperability, you kill the whole point of a phone -- being able to pick it up and call someone.
In the PBX industry, this isn't so much of an issue. While specific endpoints may use different standards, we have a PBX in between different switches that handles conversion to supported protocols. Example: A user makes a call from a Cisco CM cluster to a remote site running a Mitel 3300ICP. The Cisco set uses SCCP to talk to the Call Manager cluster, which can be integrated to the Mitel switch in a number of ways: SIP trunks(VoIP), T1/D4, ISDN/PRI, or Q.SIG. The CM cluster converts SCCP to whichever type of trunking we use for the integration, goes across the link, and then the 3300 converts to MiNet and communicates with the Mitel endpoint.
Now that the background of why this works in that industry is out of the way, where does that leave us? If we deviate from whatever standard the network sets, we run into this issue: If you have a VoIP client on your phone using SIP, and I have one using H.323, how are we going to talk? We have no way of knowing when connecting the call what standard the cell phone is going to be using, and even if we invent a signaling channel to report that, what is the carrier incentive to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars of VoIP switching equipment to handle the conversion? And beyond that, once they have that infrastructure in place, we're right back to them being able to monitor and bill for it.
I'm all for a more cost effective solution as a consumer, but there's really no technical way to get around them wanting to bill for everything and be able to easily call anyone on any network.
Am I the only one that was hoping for a better voice quality standard than what is currently offered on cell phones?
... and one that uses the existing data connection cleaning up the protocol stack, making it easier to think about, and most of all, making voice calls only cost the cost of data plus any connection fees to access older networks. LTE-voip to LTE-voip should not cost a cent more than the data-only costs as that's all it is. Voice data IS DATA!
Did you know that the Military can "Repurpose" headstones that they have paid for if there is ever a metal shortage to create ammunition from them?
Repurposing is real....
Let's hope that Apple doesn't license this.
Nokia suing Apple for LTE would be popcorn-worthy litigation drama.
I would prefer voip over voice anytime, there are lots of features in voip that voice can't provide.
Example?
VoIP is nothing more than an RTP stream of audio over an IP network. The only feature of VoIP is voice.
Is "existing 3GPP-defined standards for voice and SMS services over LTE" the same as "Voice over LTE via Generic Access (VoLGA)"? Because if they are, then it doesn't matter if T-Mo was there or not, because that's what T-Mo has been pushing for all along. So they got what they want.
http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=176867
They're using legacy SMS/MMS on LTE???? Would have been great if carriers couldn't continue to rape users for message rates...
(all-in-one cell package users need not reply)
Whats the advantage of doing this vs just saying "everything is an IP packet" and having a higher level protocol to handle the voice and the messaging?