MTS, Nokia make VoLTE voice and video call on telco cloud

MTS, the telecommunications operator in Russia and CIS, has completed the first Voice over LTE (VoLTE) call on a telco cloud infrastructure using Nokia’s technology and expertise. The successful end-to-end testing, conducted in the operator’s live LTE network with  user devices, gives a real-life preview of how operators can combine their offers of best voice quality and richer communication services with the most competitive and cost-effective infrastructure platforms.

The virtualization of service and control functions in the core network is an important step in using cloud technology in the telco domain. Supported by Nokia’s commercial portfolio and a cloud management system that controls the VoLTE applications in MTS’s private telco cloud, the companies have proved the telco cloud readiness of end-to-end VoLTE.

“VoLTE and telco cloud are principal technologies that will help us address new business opportunities and deliver a superior voice experience to our customers,” said Andrey Ushatskiy, chief technical and IT officer at MTS Group. “This live implementation of virtualized VoLTE with our long-standing partner, Nokia, is an important proof-of-concept and shows our commitment to offering our customers the most advanced voice services possible. We expect that the compound annual growth of mobile data traffic will reach 79% by 2020 and have to prepare our networks to deliver a quality mobile broadband experience to our customers.”

To enable the live VoLTE tests, MTS’s LTE radio network supplied by Nokia was complemented with telco cloud based voice core technology, including its IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Telephony Application Server (TAS) and Home Subscriber Server (HSS). The company’s Cloud Application Manager provided automated deployment and management of all cloud applications. Nokia’s Professional Services for VoLTE helped the operator ready the architecture and design of its network to enable multi-vendor integration and core migration, while specialized project management ensured high-quality project delivery.

“We are delighted to join forces in this pioneer project supporting MTS’s demonstration of voice services using LTE in a telco cloud,” said Kristina Tikhonova, Head of East region, Networks. “We have the most comprehensive VoLTE solution on the market and our goal is to support operators’ migrations of voice and messaging traffic to LTE. With this demonstration, we further underscore that we are commercially ready and able to do this.”