Last month, the IMTC has convened for its yearly SuperOp! testing event. while a lot of different activity groups worked there, the most interesting work done there is the VoLTE testing.

I’ve been the chairman of the IMTC IMS Activity Group for several years now. In the past two years, the group has been working hard towards interoperability of VoLTE – the all-IP solution that service providers are planning to use over their LTE networks. This work has two man challenges:

1. Write a test specification – one that is focused solely on interoperability
2. Testing – meeting several times a year for an interoperability test event among vendors

We’ve been progressing nicely on both fronts, where for each test event we’ve had a new set of test cases to work with.

Besides just having more test cases to test, the SuperOp! event brought with it two new aspects to our testing of VoLTE:

1. It was the first time we tested over a live LTE network – up until now, all of our testing were conducted over 3G, Ethernet or WiFi (as an all-IP solution, it is “usually enough”). This time, we went for the full monty, with a real network
2. It was the first time we tested over an IMS core that was provided by Huawei – we’ve tested with Ericsson and NSN several times, so a new one was a challenge

Huawei’s IMS Core network used during the SuperOp!

This is an important step forward: VoLTE may not seem as complex as a full IMS implementation, but it has its challenges. The ability to interoperate between vendors, using different IMS core networks is something that isn’t trivial. Doing it over a real LTE network brings us closer to our goal: providing the platform for vendors who wish to develop VoLTE products for their interoperability testing.

You can read more about VoLTE testing during the SuperOp! on the IMTC’s blog.