Telefonica Germany, the country’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, says it selected Ericsson as the main supplier of equipment for its voice-over-Long Term Evolution (VoLTE) upgrade, adding that it is now ready to commercially launch the technology in its network. As one of the first European operators to embrace VoLTE, Telefonica Germany says its customers will be able to enjoy high-definition (HD) voice call quality and instant call-set-up, while using simultaneous superfast data services on their LTE smartphones. In a press release the unit said the vendor’s proprietary Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) functionality enables ‘seamless handover of ongoing voice calls from LTE to circuit-switched 2G and 3G networks’. The commercial launch will take place once Telefonica has secured the full VoLTE ‘device eco-system’ (i.e. devices that can communicate with one another and are aware of each other’s presence) for mass-market launch.

Commenting on the announcement Karsten Schroder, head of converged solutions at Telefonica Germany, said: ‘When we started six years ago with the investment into IMS [IP Multimedia Subsystem] to deliver DSL voice services, we laid the seed for a strategic modernisation of our core service architecture. With the advent of VoLTE, we were able to harvest the fruits by re-using the very same IMS core for our mobile customers, being the first operator proving that VoLTE is not just a standard, but can be used in a real-life multi-vendor environment. As a result, the convergent architecture allows us today to deliver seamless services agnostic to the physical access by which the customer is connected to our network.’