[Exact Ventures]: Huawei Became the Largest PCRF Vendor

A new report by Exact Ventures finds that:

• The Policy Server/PCRF market [in 3Q15] grew 37 percent compared to 3Q14, to $202 million
   
• We expect that market growth grow by greater than 20 percent for both 2015 and 2016 and that the market will approach $1 billion for 2016

• Many operators are actively deploying VoLTE, and in some cases with video, prioritizing that traffic above all else is key to maintain and assure high quality of service. Specifically, VoLTE traffic is assigned a quality class identifier (QCI) value of 1, which guarantees a specific bit-rate, minimal packet delay (latency) and packet loss. The PCRF is the functional node within an operator’s network responsible for setting the QCI values for each mobile application.
   
• During the quarter, Huawei became the largest PCRF vendor by more than doubling revenues year-over-year to $62 million, narrowly edging Ericsson which grew nearly 50 percent versus 3Q14
   
• Huawei is very strong it its domestic market and other developing regions of Asia Pacific and EMEA where mobile data services are increasingly popular and operators are increasingly sophisticated about segmenting its targeted customers via tiered-data and sponsored data plans.

Vendors Covered in the report include: Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia / Redknee, Openet, Oracle, Sandvine and ZTE

See "Shared Data Plans and VoLTE Drive PCRF Revenues in 3Q15, According to Exact Ventures" - here.

NEC and NetCracker Released a Virtual IMS Solution for VoLTE

NEC Corporation and NetCracker Technology announced that they have ".. released a virtualized IP multimedia subsystem (vIMS) solution through their joint business brand, NEC/NetCracker SDN/NFV Solutions. The NFV-based vIMS solution offers both control and data plane functionalities of IMS for 3G mobile voice services (W-CDMA) and voice over LTE (VoLTE) services. It has successfully achieved the same service quality levels of those realized in a physical environment.

.. The vIMS solution provides users with high-quality VoLTE and high-definition video calling, leveraging general-purpose servers that share resources with other virtual network functions and IT functions. By virtualizing IMS, the vIMS solution can reduce service delivery and assurance costs while optimizing performance attributes such as quality of service and delay.

The vIMS leverages the technical functionality of NEC’s VoLTE solution. Demonstrating high availability and reliability for signaling and protocol handling and data processing, the VoLTE solution is operating live in commercial networks such as those provided by NTT DOCOMO".

See "NEC and NetCracker Release Virtualized IMS (vIMS) Solution" - here.

IHS: VoLTE Starts to Pick Up; Huawei Leads the SP VoIP and IMS Market

A new report by Diane Myers [pictured], research director for VoIP, UC and IMS, IHS finds that ".. global service provider VoIP (voice over IP) and IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) revenue was up 46 percent year-over-year in 2Q15, to $1.3 billion .. Spending related to voice over LTE (VoLTE) deployments is starting to pick up, especially in Europe and India, fueling continued strong growth in the service provider VoIP and IMS market ..As well, operators with commercial VoLTE networks in North America and Asia Pacific are purchasing additional capacity as subscriber numbers grow in those regions". 

"Huawei took the lead in overall service provider VoIP and IMS revenue market share in 2Q15 ..  Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, GENBAND and Mavenir (a division of Mitel) also had standout growth from a year ago". 

See "Service Provider VoIP and IMS Market Soars 46 Percent YoY in 2nd Quarter" - here.

Sandvine: Many of the [Many] 50 PCRF Vendors have Dead Roadmaps

Sandvine's SDE

After showing success in the PCRF market (see "Sandvine Wins 3 PCRF Deals" - here), Sandvine's CEO, Dave Caputo, provided his insights for the market and opportunity during the 2nd quarter earning call:

• We see a PCRF replacement cycle occurring as the demand of voice-over-LTE overwhelmed earlier generation products. That plays extremely well into the strength of Sandvine's PCRF .. the win was the mix of new and existing customers
   
• Sandvine has the only PCRF that supports mobile and cable standards as well as other interfaces that facilitates deployment in any mobile, fixed, or converged network
   
• We happily would work with any existing PCRF vendor that a service provider has deployed
   
• we've seen is there has been some consolidation in the space notably Oracle has made some moves here. And as people are renewing their support and maintenance for as aspects of roadmaps might being abandoned
   
• And there were many, many players, there is as many as may be 50 PCRF vendors [here] out there. And lot of them only had success with one, two or three customers with the exception of a couple of the top players .. and so you could imagine there are some very dead roadmaps out there on those 50 vendors that only had one, two, three, four wins

See "Sandvine's (SNVNF) CEO Dave Caputo on Q2 2015 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha, here.

ZTE to Use Radisys' Virtual MediaEngine to Accelerate HD Media Service Deployment

Radisys announced a "strategic partnership that will standardize Radisys’ MediaEngine™ virtualized Media Resource Function (vMRF) as the media processing solution for ZTE’s Value-added Services (VAS) and core network offerings in VoLTE, VoWiFi, video and IMS. By leveraging Radisys’ common media processing platform for all of its cloud-based offerings, ZTE is helping its customers accelerate the deployment of new interactive HD audio and HD video services, while reducing upfront capital expenditures and ongoing operating expenses".

Yang Wei, chief architect of core network deployment, ZTE Corporation said: “To enable our mobile operator customers’ transition to an NFV environment, ZTE is migrating its IMS solutions and VoLTE core network service offerings to a cloud architecture, driving an important requirement for virtualized media processing. Radisys’ vMRF delivers HD audio and HD video media processing and transcoding that are required by today’s increasingly multimedia-intensive applications.”

See "ZTE Selects Radisys’ Virtualized Media Resource Function to Power its VoLTE, VoWiFi, and Value-added Services" - here.

[Infonetics]: SDM Market Grew by 29%, to $1.4B in 2014

A recent research by Shira Levine [pictured], research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research finds that the "worldwide subscriber data management (SDM) market grew 29 percent in 2014 over 2013, to $1.4 billion, fueled by operator demand for voice over LTE (VoLTE) and subscriber analytics .. momentum around big data and analytics has the potential to have an even more significant impact on the SDM market, as operators seek to break down the data silos that exist within their organizations and better leverage subscriber data to improve the customer experience and drive additional revenue" 

Other findings:

• "Operators are looking to deploy subscriber data management (SDM) as a centralized subscriber data repository that can be integrated with multiple front-end applications potentially from multiple vendors
   
• Virtualization of front-end applications such as home subscriber server (HSS) and policy and charging rules function (PCRF) are well underway, and virtualization of the backend SDM platform is following suit, but concerns about reliability, availability and security persist"

See "Subscriber Data Management Market Up 29 Percent as Big Data, VoLTE Rev" - here.

Sandvine Enhances PCRF w/VoLTE and VoWiFi Support

Sandvine released an ".. enhanced Service Delivery Engine (SDE), which adds Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) support to the industry’s only universal Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) .. As a standalone PCRF, the latest SDE enhancements enable a number of specific VoLTE and VoWiFi use cases, including guaranteed quality of service (QoS). 

Sandvine's VoIP QoE report 

  

[Related posts: "Amdocs Launches (Industry First?) VoLTE-Dedicated PCRF" - here and "Tekelec Enhances PCRF with VoLTE, Wi-Fi and more" - here]

When deployed as part of a complete Sandvine network policy control solution, the additional network intelligence gained enables a number of additional use cases including, measurement of VoLTE and VoWiFi quality of experience (QoE) for both on-deck and over-the-top (OTT) services, as well as Single Number Reach, which permits use of a single phone number across multiple connected devices and access networks".

Sandvine's ServiceDesigner interface

See "Sandvine Adds VoLTE and VoWiFi Support to Access-Agnostic, Universal PCRF" - here.

Ericsson SSR 8000 Contracts Follow-up, Q4 2014

In its Q4 report, Ericsson provides their standard update on the number of VoLTE and SSR 8000 deployments:

• "The Ericsson solution for VoLTE continued to gain momentum across regions. Two customers in Japan launched commercial VoLTE services in the quarter
   
• To date 146 contracts for the multi-application IP router, SSR 8000, has been signed, since the launch in December 2011. During the quarter, 12 new contracts were signed of which two were for fixed networks".

See "Fourth quarter and full-year report 2014" - here.

GSA: 360 LTE Networks Launched; 96 in 2014

A new report by GSA finds that:

• 360 operators have commercially launched LTE networks and service in 124 countries (vs. 572 HSPA networks in 213 countries)
   
• 96 LTE networks were launched in 2014
   
• 611 operators are investing in LTE across 174 countries. This comprises 566 operator network deployment commitments in 166 countries (of which 360 networks have launched), and 45 pre-commitments trials in a further 8 countries
   
• The LTE commercial service footprint extended to a further 27 countries in 2014
   
• 80 operators in 42 countries i.e. over 22% of operators are investing in VoLTE deployments, studies or trials
   
• 14 operators having launched HD voice service using VoLTE in 7 countries. Many more launches are expected in 2015
   
• 107 operators in total, i.e. almost 30% of LTE operators have launched, are deploying or are trialling LTE-Advanced technologies
   
• 49 operators have commercially launched LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation in 31 countries, and this figure could double in 2015
   
• 373 million LTE subscriptions globally by Q3 2014 (according to Ovum) achieving 131% YoY growth. The balance of regional shares continued to shift to Asia, driven by impressive growth in China

See "GSA confirms 360 LTE networks commercially launched by end 2014, strong growth in LTE-Advanced and VoLTE deployments" - here.

[ABI]: VoLTE (w/IMS) is the Next Big Thing; $30B Market to 2019

   

A new report by Sabir Rafiq [pictured], research analyst, ABI Research finds that ".. as the first wave of LTE deployments achieve coverage, VoLTE is the next big thing. VoLTE runs on IMS, and the market will total over $US30 billion through 2019 as it becomes widespread. 

Leading infrastructure vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia are fully committed to VoLTE and IMS space and equip customers with this next wave in mobile broadband. Similarly, other vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Cisco recognize the impact VoLTE and IMS will have on the market. These vendors are active in the VoLTE space by offering credible solutions in order to attract and retain customers ..  IMS mobile core revenue corresponds directly with the popularity of VoLTE”.

".. With the availability of VoLTE smartphones, operators realize benefits with improving quality in voice service, and also top-line growth with value adding services. This leads to increasing VoLTE services in smartphones, with Apple [see "iPhone 6 also supports Voice over LTE (VoLTE)" - here] and high-end Android  [see "New Moto X on Verizon to get Advanced Calling 1.0, run VoLTE - here] devices leading the way. 

[see also: "GSA: 116 MNOs Offer HD Voice - Even on 2G Networks!" - here]

VoLTE will become extremely important in the future and ABI Research believes competitive positioning will lead operators to VoLTE/IMS"

See "Mobile Broadband Operators Scramble for VoLTE, Creating an IMS Land Rush as Ericsson and Nokia Stake Claims on the $US30 Billion Market" - here.

GSA: 116 MNOs Offer HD Voice - Even on 2G Networks!

GSA reports that ".. 116 mobile operators in 75 countries have commercially launched HD voice services .. more than 30% higher than a year ago. Mobile HD voice uses Adaptive Multi Rate Wideband (W-AMR) technology, enabling high-quality voice calls in supporting mobile networks and an improved user experience for calls between mobile phones supporting the feature"

"The majority of operators offer HD voice service over a single radio access network, however some offer the service over more than one network system: The system technology totals are:

• 105 HD voice operators use 3G/HSPA networks
• 10 HD voice operator use 2G/GSM networks
• 11 HD voice operator use 4G/LTE networks"

See "116 mobile operators launched Mobile HD voice in 75 countries; 11 operators launched with VoLTE" - here.

[Infonetics]: VoLTE Slows down the IMS Market (led By Huawei)

A new report by Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS, Infonetics Research finds that deployments of VoLTE services slows down the IMS equipment market - "The global service provider VoIP and IMS market totaled $878 million in 2Q14, down 6% from 2Q13, and down 12% sequentially .. Huawei and Metaswitch are the standout IMS/VoIP vendors in 2Q14, bucking the down quarter"

"To date, nationwide launches of voice over LTE (VoLTE) have taken place only in small countries and city-states such as South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong .. Larger nationwide launches of VoLTE in the U.S. and Japan are expected to begin toward the end of 2014; this, in addition to the activity of operators in Europe, Canada, and other parts of Asia, will fuel IMS equipment related to VoLTE in 2015.

The large network equipment vendors—Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia—are benefitting from VoLTE-related activity and product sets that extend beyond IMS". 

See "Service provider VoIP and IMS market enters period of correction after ramp-up to VoLTE" - here.

[Research]: VoLTE is Better than OTT VoIP

Mobile networks vendors continue to claim that their built-in VoIP (VoLTE) beats OTT's VoIP in all aspects - efficiency,performance and quality.

We saw internal research from Nokia - see "NSN: VoLTE Beats OTT VoIP 4:0 !" - here and "Nokia: VoLTE is Doing Better than OTT's VoIP Under Load" - here.

Alcatel-Lucent joins the trend and announces "the results of an independent research study [Signals Research Group, here] which found that its commercially deployed Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) technology provides better service than 3G Circuit Switched (CS) voice and Internet calling services and Skype software. The analysis found that VoLTE users enjoyed considerably better call quality, faster connectivity and substantially less drain on the batteries of their mobile devices"

• VoLTE call quality greatly exceeded that of 3G CS voice and was measurable higher than the HD voice service offered by Skype
   
• With network loading, and in particular with background applications running on the mobile phone and transferring data with the network, the VoLTE results were considerably better than Skype
   
• VoLTE call setup time was nearly twice as fast as 3G Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) call setup
   
• VoLTE used substantially fewer network resources than Skype voice, which in turn resulted in longer estimated device battery life for the subscriber and a more efficient network for the operator
   
• When leaving LTE coverage, VoLTE calls were successfully handed over to 3G CS voice. The network’s enhanced Single Radio Voice Call Continuity ensures calls continue without interruption

See "Signals Research Group study shows commercially deployed VoLTE service better than 3G and Internet calling services such as Skype™" - here.

GSA: 318 Operators Launched LTE Networks; 69 LTE-A; 66 Launched VoLTE

GSA reports that "318 operators have commercially launched LTE networks and service in 111 countries .. Israel [by Orange Israel - see "LTE Services Enabled in Israel - See my Speedtest Results" - here], Madagascar and the Northern Mariana Islands are amongst the latest nations to access commercial LTE mobile broadband service for the first time. 51 LTE networks have launched so far in 2014. The total number of commercial LTE networks is expected to be more than 350 by the end of this year.

.. LTE networks capable of supporting 150 Mbps peak downlink (for Category 4 user devices) are commercially launched in at least 36 countries .. 69 operators, i.e. over 21%, are deploying LTE-Advanced technologies, 15 operators have launched carrier aggregation, including 4 operators whose networks support 300 Mbps Category 6 user devices

66 operators in 35 countries are investing in VoLTE studies, trials or deployments, including 10 operators in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and the USA who have commercially launched HD voice service using VoLTE. 

See "Over 50 LTE networks launched this year, total is 318 in 111 countries" - here.

Nokia: VoLTE is Doing Better than OTT's VoIP Under Load

Gerald Reddig [pictured], continues its story on Nokia's testing of VoLTE vs. OTT VoIP [see "NSN: VoLTE Beats OTT VoIP 4:0!" - here].

The first report showed clear advantages to VoLTE in battery, bandwidth and signaling consumption.

However ... "These tests, however, were conducted under ideal radio conditions with no network load. The Smart Labs team was curious what the results would be with a more realistic scenario. To find out, the team tested both services again – but this time placed the system under various non-Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR) loads, including best-effort services such as file downloads, e-mail and Internet browsing, and with poor radio conditions. It turns out that VoLTE voice quality is not affected at all by non-GBR traffic thanks to Quality of Service (QoS) configuration, so VoLTE voice quality was kept at a good level"

"It turns out that VoLTE voice quality is not affected at all by non-GBR traffic thanks to Quality of Service (QoS) configuration, so VoLTE voice quality was kept at a good level". 

See "Which is better, VoIP or VoLTE? A reality check" - here.

ipoque Enhances Its DPI Package; Adds Metadata Extraction; VoLTE Performance Measurements

ipoque announced its "..next generation PACE 2.0 software that identifies thousands of applications and services and provides deeper insight on application attributes such as real-time performance metrics, all from a single solution .. providing high-speed application identification in real-time together with QoE metrics on VoLTE traffic at 40Gbps speed.

Dirk Czepluch [pictured], President and CTO, ipqoue said: “ipoque is focusing on key telecom industry challenges including the management of quality of experience for voice and video services on modern LTE mobile networks. This not only requires the fast application detection that PACE 2.0 provides, but also extensive metadata extraction and measurement in real-time of key performance indicators. This level of performance is particularly critical for the traffic steering of time-sensitive VoLTE & video apps, for deeper analytics to monetize new services and to assure services based on improved application monitoring and troubleshooting".

New on PACE 2.0: 

• New all-in-one protocol and application classification engine also capable of advanced metadata extraction. 
• More efficient for customers to get deeper application insight, and the granularity of detail is 100% configurable. 
• Advanced accuracy of application detection with clear separation of protocols, applications and services, including a packet processing toolkit. 
• Fully optimized to work with leading third-party acceleration solutions e.g. Napatech and Intel.
• QoS/QoE Analytics to enable VoIP/VoLTE performance measurements 

See "ipoque enhances IP application detection to meet the QoE demands of VoLTE and video on mobile networks" - here.

Openet Sees PCC for VoLTE Success (AT&T?)

  

Openet announced that "Openet’s policy and charging control (PCC) solution for voice over LTE (VoLTE) services has been successfully deployed on multiple operator networks worldwide. The standards compliant PCC solution enables operators to configure policies and develop new charging and billing models for VoLTE service rollouts .. Demand for VoLTE services means virtualization will play a key role to ensure ease of configuration and speed of VoLTE deployments. Openet has extensive experience with virtualized PCC deployments, working with a tier one North American operator who is using Openet’s PCC solutions in a virtualized environment".

According to people familiar with the market, one of those MNOs, it AT&T - a long time customer of Openet (see "AT&T Tests Openet & Cisco for LTE" - here). AT&T has launched some VoLTE services last month (see "AT&T Introduces High-Definition Voice in Initial Markets " - here).

See "Openet Announces Standards Compliant Policy and Charging Solution for VoLTE" - here.

[ABI]: 2B LTE Subscribers by '19; 56% to Use VoLTE

A new report by Marina Lu [pictured], research analyst, and Jake Saunders, VP and practice director of core forecasting, ABI Research finds that "By the end of 2013, global LTE-related cellular subscriptions surpassed 230.9 million, 3.3% of mobile subs, and will continue to grow at a CAGR of 36.6% between 2014 and 2019, to exceed 2 billion".

In early 2013 ABI forecasted 785M LTE subscribers by 2017 (here).

"The extensive presence of LTE networks is also stimulating the deployment of VoLTE. By the end of 2014, there are expected to be 59.6 million VoLTE subscriptions in place, and it is expected that nearly 56% of LTE-related cellular subscriptions will be using VoLTE services by the end of 2019 .. Mobile operators have continued to invest significantly in LTE network, which will cover around 64% of the world’s population by 2019"

See "Expanding LTE Coverage is Priming VoLTE Adoption and Mobile Devices Shipments" - here.

[Infonetics]: VoIP & IMS Market Grows by 37%, Due to VoLTE; ALU Leads

A new report by Diane Myers [pictured], principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS, Infonetics Research finds that "Worldwide service provider VoIP and IMS equipment revenue totaled $992 million in 1Q14, an increase of 37% from 1Q13, but a sequential decline of 9% .. the standout vendor in 1Q14 is Alcatel-Lucent, rising to the top due to strong growth of core IMS and voice application server revenue, particularly in North America"

“Voice over LTE (VoLTE) continues to positively impact the service provider VoIP and IMS equipment market, though we look for the market to slow this year as operators commercially launch services and draw down capacity built over the past year .. Already this year we have seen AT&T, PCCW/HKT, and other operators launch VoLTE services, and NTT DoCoMo is set to do so in June"

See "VoLTE fuels 37% year-over-year growth in Q1 carrier VoIP and IMS market; Alcatel-Lucent rises to top" - here.

[Heavy Reading]: The Market for DPI and Policy Control is Saturated; Yet to Double by 2018

A new report on DPI and Policy Control by Graham Finnie [pictured], Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading, finds "a significant slowdown in growth, from a whopping 30 percent in 2012 to around 17 percent in 2013. A key factor: The initial market for policy servers and deep packet inspection (DPI) gear is pretty much saturated, at least in the wireless sector .. our forecast predicts. We expect the market to nearly double from $1.45 billion in 2013 to $2.8 billion in 2018, a CAGR of 13 percent -- still pretty respectable by the standard of the overall telecom market"
 

Opportunities:
  

".. there are many new use cases driving a second or third round of spending by telcos ... enable telcos to offer a wider range of service packages and options, such as packages built around specific applications, shared usage plans, temporary passes, and so on. Support for VoLTE, telco WiFi, end-user security, prioritization under congestion, M2M, and sponsored data are also emerging on wish lists .. The good news is we've clearly moved on from theory to practical implementation with some of these ideas, with both vendors and operators reporting a wider range of new packages actually being deployed, especially in emerging economies. Here, it's not unusual to see 20 or more plans, with Facebook-only, Google Zero, and daily data passes among the options"

Challenges:

The not-so-good news is that these plans require a different kind of business justification, based on new revenues rather than lower costs -- which is often harder to justify .. Vendors report long lead and deployment times, slowing revenue recognition .. In the longer term, meanwhile, the risks are primarily associated with the transition to virtualized networks, including networks based on SDN"

See "Policy Revenues Climbing, but Hazards Loom" - here.