GSMA adopts OneVoice

Jeremy Green, Ovum

Mobile World Congress, 2010, BARCELONA, SPAIN: The OneVoice initiative, which aims to resolve the conundrum of how to handle voice (and SMS) services under LTE, has been adopted by the GSMA in a move designed to further cement the centrality of IMS as the royal road to services in mobile communications.

OneVoice was announced in November 2009 by a group of operators and vendors. The breadth of the backing then seemed to demonstrate that both groups were confident that IMS, or rather a restricted subset of IMS features and functionality, would be ready in time to obviate the need for ‘interim solutions’ to the problem of how to do voice in LTE.

Adoption of OneVoice by the GSMA – already on something of an LTE high as a result of a simultaneous announcement that Verizon Wireless, KDDI and China Telecom are to be joining the association in reflection of their commitment to LTE – is a further vote of confidence for the IMS-based approach.

Fears that operators would adopt a plethora of different interim solutions, leading to fragmentation and incompatibility between their offerings, appear to be receding. This in turn strengthens the business case for LTE, because it makes it a stronger candidate for the wholesale replacement of the existing mobile network. It is only this wholesale approach that enables the savings implicit in the more efficient operation of LTE to be realised.