Mauritius-based mobile telco Smile Telecoms has installed the first Voice over LTE system in Nigeria, with services running over a 4G LTE broadband network.

Smile Telecoms runs 4G LTE services in the 800Mhz band in Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, but this is the first time VoLTE has been run in any of the three. By the end of 2015 Smile will offer clear voice services and have national coverage comparable to the largest 3G network in each of its current countries of operation, it claims.

The voice application was installed by UK based signaling company Squire Technologies, which specialises in installing VoLTE IMS, VoIP and SS7 technology for telcos and wireless operators. Squire Technologies installed the foundation 4G LTE and was commissioned to deploy VoLTE over the top in 2014.

The VoLTE service was built on a foundation of Squire Technologies’ SVI-SBC Session Border Controller which, it claims, had been developed using five years’ worth of research and practical experience in deployments of next generation network (NGN) technology.

The SVI-SBC was configured to support LTE Pre-Conditions which in turn could create the conditions to optimise bandwidth allocation and the rollout of VoLTE handsets. The Nigerian VoLTE service calls for high volume transcoding and support for multi-device, single number services so that Smile Telecom can offer subscribers an offnet voice and messaging using the Zoiper mobile application.

At the back-end Squire Technologies uses a ‘mature’ set of media and messaging gateways, it says, in order to create a seamless interconnect between the VoLTE network and the telco’s legacy 2G, 3G and public switched telephone networks (PSTN).

“We needed a diverse range of core network signaling products and experts that could rapidly develop and evolve these products to solve the network issues we knew we would face with the VoLTE rollout,” said Smile COO Tom Allen.

Tom Allen will be speaking at AfricaCom, the biggest and best tech event in Africa, next week in Cape Town