Why voice calls on 4g may suck at first

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/10/02/feature_wtf_is_voice_over_lte_4g/

by AndrewDucker • 14 years ago

58 51 14 years ago

abstractx• 14 years ago

VoLTE doesn't even make sense to use from a network provider's perspective. 3g architecture already exists and isn't going anywhere soon while people still have 3G phones. Calls generally aren't made over 3G to this day, they're made over 2G. Since frequency spectrum is so expensive and limited, packet sizes need to be as small as possible...so unless they can fit more people on an LTE voice channel compared to a 3G voice channel, the networks aren't going to be jumping to use VoLTE. LTE should be focused on data for right now, and keep 3G for voice. When was the last time someone said, "Gee, I wish my call was faster!" anyways?

The point that keeping the phone in 3G for voice and LTE for data will drain your battery doesn't make sense to me. Keep the phone in a 3G state for SMS, voice, and push notification type data interactions, and when data is used, then it would utilize LTE. That would actually SAVE battery life, since as the article states, LTE is a battery hog.

kristofferR2• 14 years ago

It's not about the speed of the call (from the consumers point of view), it's about the audio quality. Higher bandwidth will enable vastly improved audio quality.

People may not say "Gee, I wish my call was faster!", but they sure say "Gee, can you speak clearer?"/"Gee, I can't understand you" thousands of times every day due to muddy/compressed call quality due to the compressed nature of our current cell phone calling infrastructure. Apple made a big deal about the so-called HD Audio capabilities of the iPhone 5, which is still below FM (and VoLTE quality).

And while LTE may be a battery hog right now since it's so new, don't forget that 3G was way worse when it was new. Battery consumption on LTE will improve drastically quite fast. In a year or two it probably won't use much more battery than 3G does.

pja3• 14 years ago

It's always been vaguely surprising to me that Apple hasn't used the iPhone platform to force the carriers to upgrade the voice quality. It's exactly the kind of thing that would cement the iPhone brand as the high-quality, aspirational choice.

Either Apple decided it wasn't worth the effort, or the carriers flatly refused I guess.

mcbridematt• 14 years ago

> Calls generally aren't made over 3G to this day, they're made over 2G

You must be talking about CDMA (EV-DO vs 1xRTT) only. Not true with GSM+UMTS networks.

As far as network operators are concerned, the more data (incl. voice channels) carriers that can be fit into their spectrum allocation and/or existing site layout, the better. Of course they want to use LTE for voice, but the VoLTE saga has been a long and drawn out one.

Aardwolf• 14 years ago

So if I understand this correctly, 4G, despite having higher bandwidth, results in either bad voice quality, or a 2-4 second delay? Voice quality over the phone has been good for a 100 years, and now they can't match it with a higher bandwidth? Back to the drawing board I say!

kristofferR2• 14 years ago

Voice quality has never been good on cellphones, it's actually far below even so called FM-quality, which is far below CD-quality. The microphones are capable of recording voice in a much better voice quality than what is currently transferred through the networks. Phone audio is normally extremely compressed. So called HD Audio, audio with a wider bandwidth, was actually touted as great new iPhone 5 feature, since we've all noticed that the audio quality of cell phones calls are horrible compared to the real voice or even audio recordings made by the same microphones.

VoLTE is a new technology and isn't totally ready yet, but when it is it'll enable vastly improved call quality.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/24/fraunhofer-full-hd-voice-...

yardie2• 14 years ago

Voice quality used to be very good on mobile. My first CDMA phone was indistinguishable from a landline, with some people surprised I was right outside their door when I called. And it was a big selling point in the early mobile analog to digital transition. My first cellphone was from Primeco PCS who made had no qualms about saying that TDMA (the competing standard at the time) sounded like shit compared to their CDMA phones.

As all good things eventually end Primeco was sliced up into Verizon Wireless and Sprint. With the only competing tech being TDMA from ATT Wireless they compressed the voice channel even more to accomodate more customers.

TL;DR: CDMA audio, currently, is almost indistinguishable from landlines but the carriers choose compression over quality

yaantc2• 14 years ago

"Enable" is indeed the key word. VoLTE does support AMR wideband, and there are other wideband codec evolutions in the pipe. But it also supports AMR narrowband.

So it'll be up to the operator to decide between higher voice quality or higher capacity. That will depend on how much spectrum is available, and load. It may even change during the day depending on a cell load.

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

I've always found Skypes audio quality to be far superior to phone or cellphone...that is when lag doesn't come into play. I wonder how much more or less bandwidth they use for audio vs traditional voice networks.

sp332• 14 years ago

The billing system causes a 2-4 second delay when first connecting a call. Using Skype or other "data is data" VoIP app (that doesn't treat voice-data differently from data-data) would avoid that problem and have plenty of bandwidth.

revelation• 14 years ago

The main concern seems to be

Will they accept a lesser experience than they're used to?

And quite frankly, of course they will. Thats the beauty in having a monopoly on cell phone coverage.

com• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Even in the US there are multiple carriers active in every market, and I assume that 3G is competing against LTE as products for the same provider, in the same market. That should mean that LTE subscribers might turn off their LTE to get better call-connect speed, or simply choose a 3G subscription if that functions adequately enough for their general data needs.

That might mean that the big problem will be to convince people to jump to LTE (and the higher price) with slightly worse end-user voice experience. Some customers will, but perhaps many won't. Artificial quality degradation of 3G might be the answer for that, or limiting the 3G-only contract data limits to encourage LTE adoption.

sneak3• 14 years ago

In Germany (the largest economy in the EU, and a population of 80M people) there is exactly ONE (1) carrier whose LTE works with iPhone 5.

There are zero (0) that work with the LTE chip/frequencies in the new iPad.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

They will because voice calls are on major decline. It's all about data and SMS now, sadly.

liotier3• 14 years ago

I confirm the two to four seconds delay in experimental deployments. When I first saw the proposed architecture, I couldn't believe it - kludge was the first word to spring to my mind. All that while the deployment of IMS platforms is gathering steam... Why can't IMS become the voice carrier ? SIP everywhere and no more circuit switching... What's wrong with that ? NIH ?

seiji3• 14 years ago

Another "why can't they do this already" technology that impacts millions of people every day: seamless GSM to wifi (and back) handoff. They had specs, prototypes, and demos back in 2004. It never went anywhere. Is it just because "they" wanted to overcharge for microcell hardware and tack on monthly fees?

Imagine being on a call outside, walking inside, through an elevator, and up to your room/office/flat/apartment and not have the call disconnect. No GSM repeaters in the loop. Your call went from AT&T->Wifi VoIP automatically and it'll switch back to GSM when you leave wireless range again.

liotier3• 14 years ago

Handover between GSM/UMTS and Wifi works in the wild... But there is more to market acceptance than just having a perfectly fine technical solution : http://www.kineto.com/wi-ficellular-handover-the-state-of-th...

dfox2• 14 years ago

"VoLTE" seems to be an new term for some subset of IMS. There are three problems with end-to-end SIP as of now:

1) You want to make and receive calls where other end is in PSTN or non-AIN PLMN or otherwise unable to directly process RTP payload stream (you essentially can use SIP for circuit switched data paths, although terminating SIP sessions at adge of circuit switched network seems like better solution).

2) Handover LTE->GSM when leaving coverage area. It is possible to handover an active packet data session from LTE radio channel to almost anything else (including WiFi), but with active call the target transport has to be able to support required bitrate and latency, which is clearly impossible with plain GPRS, barely attainable with EDGE. On the other hand LTE allows transparent handover to just about anything that is IP (wired ethernet, anyone?). Cludgeness of the IP handover architecture is caused by two things: no real deployment of IPv6 when first GPRS networks were designed and desire for this architecture to support non-IP protocols (things like X.25 over EDGE are specified as possible, although probably non-existent).

3) QoS on backhaul network. While LTE All-IP backhauls are simpler to build (and in fact mostly cheaper, because designer has more freedom with network topology), they present different set of challenges than normal circuit switched networks when it comes to QoS. This tends to be complicated further by desire to tunnel PCM/ATM based interfaces of legacy network base station components of newly built sites through same backhaul Ethernet/IP link (there goes your topology freedom...).

Also there is slight problem of how to bill SIP/RTP calls spanning different networks, it is technically possible to capture data you need to do normal per-minute billing, but it is not clear whether that is good model for LTE. In my opinion best solution is to bill for data transferred across LTE network, for call-management operations (ie. per-call fee) and for possible costs of call termination through circuit switched network all at once, with possibly separate entities providing each of these services. This seems to me like fair pricing scheme, but on the other hand it is not understandable by common consumer and thus probably infeasible for carriers.

Not doing voice calls over LTE and relying on fallback to whatever legacy circuit switched technology is supported by network and MS is good way for carrier to workaround these issues. But if I correctly understand conditions of LTE spectrum allocations in Czech Republic, best way to meet these conditions is to actually roll-out VoLTE from the start (these conditions mostly require availability of voice service everywhere with expectation that missing coverage areas of GSM/UMTS will be filled with LTE, which seems like technological nonsense to me, but it is how it is).

liotier3• 14 years ago

Billing has seen much worse cases. QOS is just fine too, at least on the radio segment : LTE allows dedicated bearers, each with differentiated QOS, and no one in his right mind will try VOIP on GPRS or EDGE. Backhaul QOS is currently contentious - which is why we are scrambling like mad to lay fiber everywhere, so it will only be a problem for a while. Inter-protocol handover is hairy, but it has been done before - though it is indeed a significant technical hurdle. So handing over between SIP voice and CS voice seems to be the harder problem. Has anyone seen research in that direction ?

dkhenry• 14 years ago

I think this is really a case of someone looking at a emerging technology and saying well its not going to be good because it isn't good _now_. In America the time frame where we even start to think about VoLTE is middle to end of next year , and there are hundreds of engineers from a dozen companies working on making it better. From a technical standpoint there is no reason why it would be worse, in fact all the technical reasons point to it being better once we figure out the implementation. This is like saying PC gaming is going to suck because General Custards Revenge sucked.

lucaspiller2• 14 years ago

> Network operators might not care about that if voice didn't contribute so much to the money they make off each user. There may well come a time when their revenue will come solely from data traffic. At that point, the networks shouldn't care whether voice is handled by their app, Skype's or another - it's all just data, after all.

I would actually be quite happy if this came to be true. Both mobile and at home the main use of my service is data, but both come bundled with a voice plan that I don't use. Heck we don't even have the phone plugged in at home as it isn't used. I would happily get a data only plan if one was available at a good rate.

seiji3• 14 years ago

My prepaid €20 3G SIM with 15 GB gives me a responsive network connection with low variance latency. Know what that means? I just open up Skype and use it for every call back home. Works better than Skype over any public shared 802.11 network.

YMMVUYAIET (your mileage may very unless you are in europe too)

cocojumbo123• 14 years ago

Actually network operators are extremely worried of becoming just a dumb bit pipe. They have seen what happened to fixed telephony and don't want to get the same route.

I mean how else would they make users pay 20c for 140 bytes :)

For example, many global operators tried some variant of a walled garden (apps, music, ringtones, etc). Another example: afaik there are no technological limitations of having something called "homezone" - i.e. when at home all your mobile traffic goes via WiFi and not through operator's network.

Luckily for us, users, innovative competition (like free.fr - it's in French) will help break the giants and lower the rates.

Disclaimer: I work in Telecom sector, not for an operator though

pixelcort3• 14 years ago

If you live in the US it might be a good idea to have a telephone plugged into your landline anyways. This way if there's a combined electrical failure and cell phone failure, you'll still be able to make 911 calls. There is also a reverse 911 conference call system that works with landline phones.

At least in California, if you're renting, your landlord is required to provide you with a working telephone line. You and them don't even need to pay anything, just make sure there's a working dial tone.

lucaspiller2• 14 years ago

Interesting... I'm actually in Europe, and the phone line is on the back of the cable modem, so if there is a combined power failure we are out of luck...

count2• 14 years ago

I love the pervasive myth that you don't need electricity to use a landline phone in 2012. You're more likely to have a working cell phone (generator @ the tower) than a working phone line in an area with FTTH (say, Verizon FIOS deployments, or cable co. VOIP deployments). Sure, the PON and gear has a battery backup, but it doesn't last anywhere near as long as the generator at the cell tower, or the battery in my cellphone.

ksec• 14 years ago

So say, every Android and iPhone Devices, and may be Windows Phone 8 will come with a default hidden VoIP inside, if it is collected using LTE it will use that instead, the data would then be discounted over in the Mobile Network. This to act as a temp solution until VoLTE comes.

Like Jeremy Clarkson in Top Gear, How hard can it be?

The article also fails to mention why VoLTE is hard and takes so long. It said many different network operator has many different implementations. And even if that is true there is only a handful of network provider these days that network operator uses, Errisson, Nokia-Simens, ZTE, Huawei, and i dont know who else. ( Samsung?? ) They had to test again 3 others. Again how hard could that be?

zurn• 14 years ago

The telco world tried to do deploy IMS already in the 3G era but couldn't get it working due to complexity, now they rely on it for voice in 4G .. resulting in no voice service?

josh2600• 14 years ago

Here's the punchline that most of the writers in the industry don't discuss.

IMS is an interoperability standard, but everyone implements their own version. The original intention of IMS was to provide a method of dealing with non-IP systems as IP (Particularly SS7 related functionality). The issue is that SS7 was the last pre-divestiture routing system (thus it was the last ubiquitous standard), and there can be no consensus in the industry anymore with respect to standardization.

So why no VoLTE? Because there isn't a standard that everyone is willing to implement, and there probably never will be. IMS is different everywhere you go.

jevinskie• 14 years ago

I wonder how efficient VoLTE will be. I love the idea that my carrier is just a dumb pipe that I use to make VoIP calls with whatever service I desire but from what I have heard that may be a poor engineering decision. I remember a Qualcomm (its their baseband chip in the iPhone 4S and 5) engineer state that there have been decades of research into getting the highest # of calls and best call quality per Hz of OTA bandwidth. The engineer went on to say that operating at a packet level is too high of an abstraction if you want to squeeze the most out of the cell network. He stated that you must drop down into lower, more niche/optimized layers to really match the efficiency that they already have achieved on GSM/CDMA voice.

cliff• 14 years ago

Your're probably right, but maybe it doesn't matter? Voice traffic is a diminishing percentage of overall cellular traffic. LTE optimizes for the increasing majority of traffic - data.

There are extra advantages to LTE -- for example, T-Mobile is using it to make it so that you can seamlessly handover phone calls between cell towers and wifi access points (using IMS, not VoLTE). Previously this was only possible via complex technology embedded in the phone's baseband (UMA).

More calls routed over wifi means less cell utilization.

jjtheblunt3• 14 years ago

More details needed. (Ex Qualcomm engineer here, who finds the argument you were told tenuous. CDMA and GSM use digital vocoders, some adjust the bitrate for the characteristics of what is being encoded, but I'm just curious about the details of the argument.)

wmf• 14 years ago

Packets have more overhead than TDM circuits just because of headers, but LTE does contain several optimizations for VoIP like header compression.

Why voice calls on 4g may suck at first

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