China Mobile demonstrates world’s first international TDD/FDD VoLTE Call

Chinese operator China Mobile has teamed up with infrastructure vendor Huawei to demonstrate the world’s first international VoLTE HD voice and video calls between a TDD LTE network and a FDD LTE network, the vendor said.

The demonstration was conducted over China Mobile’s VoLTE trial networks in Chengdu and Hangzhou, and a VoLTE network in South Korea.

Li Zhengmao, China Mobile’s vice president, held a meeting to demonstrate the call, as China Mobile steps up its efforts to accelerate VoLTE commercialisation and TD-LTE internationalisation.

The video call demonstration between China Mobile’s trial network in Hangzhou and a network in South Korea was made by Li Zhengmao through the Huawei’s multimedia conference system in Chengdu.

“China Mobile attaches great importance to VoLTE development,” said Li over the video call. “In June of this year, China Mobile’s president, Li Yue, released a VoLTE white paper stating that China Mobile will achieve VoLTE commercialisation by the end of 2014. This VoLTE voice and video interaction has great strategic significance and will help further promote support of the VoLTE solution in the global LTE industry.”

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Although China Mobile’s TD-LTE deployment is gaining momentum in China, issues relating to global interoperability of TD-LTE services, such as the international roaming capability of LTE voice and data, as well as VoLTE interworking across different countries, must be resolved before TD-LTE services can achieve full internationalisation.

The VoLTE demonstration shows that China Mobile’s TDD VoLTE network has the capability to cross international boundaries and interwork with networks that use different communication systems, said Huawei.

In July this year, Huawei and China Mobile jointly conducted what they claim was the world’s first TD-LTE based eSRVCC handover test. Then in September, China Mobile made what it claims to be the world’s first national VoLTE voice call in a TD-LTE network environment by partnering with Huawei.

As of November 2013, Huawei said it has deployed 172 IMS networks worldwide, including 14 VoLTE networks.