Big Carriers Will Want Small Ones to Support VoLTE Roaming

As the nation’s largest wireless service providers roll out voice over LTE (VoLTE), they’re looking for ubiquitous coverage -- and that presents both opportunities and challenges for the nation’s smaller rural wireless operators that rely on roaming agreements with the larger carriers for coverage outside their home turf. “The Tier 2 and Tier 3 [carriers] know it’s just a matter of time before roaming agreements require this,” said Damian Sazama, vice president of corporate and product marketing for Interop Technologies, a provider of cloud-based wireless infrastructure.

But unlike previous cellular voice services, VoLTE is IP-based and as Sazama explained, it requires an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) core, which can be a major undertaking. As of now few, if any, smaller network operators have launched VoLTE for their own customers -- although Sazama expects to see smaller carrier VoLTE launches summer 2015.