NEW DELHI: The global Voice over LTE (VoLTE) user base is expected to grow to 310 million by the end of the ongoing fiscal year, up from 185 million VoLTE users in 2015, according to a report by IHS Technology, which added that the base is likely to touch a billion mark by 2020, aided by China Mobile’s VoLTE migration, up from 185 million VoLTE users in 2015.
The report said that last year most of the VoLTE users came from Japan, South Korea and the US.
Worldwide VoLTE service revenue is projected to reach $6.3 billion by 2020, with almost half coming from North America, where average revenue per user (ARPU) is the highest in the world. At that time, Asia Pacific will have three times more VoLTE users than North America but revenue will be 13 percent lower.
“Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is quickly ramping up, with improvements in network efficiencies and spectrum reuse as the chief drivers,” By Stéphane Téral, senior research director, mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, IHS Technology said.
According to IHS estimates and those of the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), there are currently 63 VoLTE commercial networks up and running. This is a net addition of 23 VoLTE networks to the existing 40 that were online at the end of December 2015.
“In each of the currently operational 63 VoLTE networks, existing subscribers become de facto VoLTE users when they upgrade their devices to LTE-capable ones. For the majority of the VoLTE networks, the service is marketed as a device feature rather than something to which a user subscribes,” Téral said.
“There is no longer any excuse to delay VoLTE, as the VoLTE ecosystem is in place. Tere are currently 500 commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks in the world, and every single network will eventually support VoLTE, as it is inevitable that voice will go to LTE,” Téral said.
However, making VoLTE work perfectly with no glitches remains challenging, and service providers know they need to achieve a degree of LTE network ubiquity and then beef up their IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) infrastructures to fully support VoLTE. But in the meantime, the VoLTE frontrunners are ramping up VoLTE users.
As, VoLTE continues to surge worldwide, the need for roaming becomes greater, giving rise to VoLTE roaming as the next big thing to come—and fueling the debate over local breakout (LBO) versus S8 home routing (S8HR).
The report tracked VoLTE providers such as AT&T, Beeline, China Mobile, KDDI, KT, LG U Plus, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Rogers, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Telefónica, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and others.