During his keynote session at LTE World Summit, Huawei’s president of wireless network R&D, Ying Weimin, equated LTE user experience and satisfaction with Einstein’s E=MC2 theory.

Speaking in Amsterdam, Weimin said: “Experience equals multi-layer coverage and capacity, or E=MC2.”

He explained one of the biggest challenges facing user quality of experience for voice over LTE and HD video streaming is coverage, and that Huawei is now focussing its efforts into the second incarnation of the tech, calling it “VoLTE Plus”.

“One of the biggest challenges is VoLTE coverage, so now we’re putting our efforts into VoLTE Plus,” he said. “In 2016 we want to input an additional 2dB gain for the uplink to improve the performance of VoLTE. In Hong Kong, HKT has been the first global VoLTE player, with more than 2000 LTE sites, and more than 100,000 users of the service. LTE Voice latency is less than 0.6 seconds, and handover success rates on VoLTE are more than 99.8%, both of which significantly outperform 3G calling.”

Meanwhile, Ovum’s Mark Newman said that operators are increasingly being seen as video content suppliers and the industry has to ensure it is able to keep up with that perception.

“Now operators need to think about video and are increasingly being seen as video content delivery networks, and I’m convinced that Verizon’s recent acquisition of AOL demonstrates this,” he said. “Has LTE been a success? Absolutely. Certainly in the mind of the customer. Has LTE been a success for the CFO?  I suppose, any operator that’s had a sensible pricing strategy and persuaded its customers to go up through the gears to a higher data tariff has monetised LTE.”