In the last few weeks we have covered enough about OTT Apps and its disruption to the entire Telecom industry. However, during course of my research on VoLTE, I found out that OTT Apps are not at the same level of Advantage as VoLTE Apps which Telecom Operators will bind to their Network. Of course their argument will be the High cost of Spectrum and Network investment.
In general terms VoIP sounds like transmitting Voice over IP network but with the underlying 4G LTE Network. However, technically they differ and we’d like to enlighten the difference between VoIP and VoLTE.
- VoLTE leverages the packet tagging capabilities of IPv5 to give priority routing to voice related packets, resulting in a significantly higher quality of service (QoS) relative to “normal” VoIP.
- VoLTE also can fall back onto 3G voice seamlessly if coverage becomes patchy, whereas the VoIP call would likely be dropped. This should make it a much more robust product.
- VoLTE calls are handled at the radio level as an IP call, but go back to a “normal” voice call once it hits the trunk. In other words, VoLTE calls will still trigger interconnect payments on outgoing calls
VoLTE is analogous to having a VIP Traffic Lane while VoIP / OTT Apps like Viber, Skype, Line, WeChat will have to be content with normal IP based mobile data routing which will produce inferior quality of calls relative to VoLTE calls; this is where Telecom Operators will have an edge over others.
Operators like Airtel & Reliance Jio Infocomm will market VoLTE with a focus on quality rather than cost, aimed primarily at top end users to begin with who also bring in huge ARPU to the company. They do not think top end consumers will demand a lower price for VoLTE given high product quality. Ultimately VoLTE will likely be invisible to the user as new handset settings can automatically make a call over VoLTE when available but over 3G circuit switched when LTE is not available, this where Airtel has an advantage as it has a full CSFB implementation while Reliance Jio doesn’t have any network as of now to fallback.
The overall adoption curve will take time, and be dependent on devices. Most older devices cannot handle VoLTE yet.