Can You Hear Me Better Now? Mobile Benchmark Shows Dramatic Improvement in Customer Experience in Washington, D.C.
P3 communications Provides First Independent Public Validation of VoLTE Performance
MORRISTOWN, N.J., June 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The results are in. In the first independent mobile benchmark of Voice over LTE services in the United States, conducted in Washington, D.C., P3 communications Inc. today reported that VoLTE is delivering on its promise to provide crystal clear voice clarity and ultra-fast call connections. However, major U.S. carriers still have plenty of work to do to optimize their LTE networks and provide the VoLTE-to-VoLTE calling between carriers and the international VoLTE roaming customers expect.
"Anyone who has driven in and out of HD AM/FM radio coverage areas is familiar with the rich sound possible with high definition audio," said Dirk Bernhardt, CEO of P3 communications Inc., an international consulting, engineering and testing services company. "The difference between a voice call made over wideband VoLTE and one using a traditional narrowband circuit switched network is like the difference between talking under water and standing right next to a person on quiet moonlit night."
(See video introduction with P3 communications CEO Dirk Bernhardt at http://www.p3-group.com/p3-us-public-benchmark-2015-video. Read full benchmark report at http://www.p3-group.com/p3-us-public-benchmark-2015-report)
During two weeks of intensive testing in late April and early May, P3 engineers drove more than 1,300 miles on and inside the I-495 Capital Beltway in two specially-equipped measurement vehicles. All voice test calls were mobile to mobile and set up from one P3 test vehicle to the other. Traveling carefully selected routes to measure VoLTE performance from the customer's perspective, they made some 7,000 voice calls and collected more than 50,000 speech samples to compare the real-world performance of legacy circuit switched networks and the new VoLTE networks of major carriers in Washington, D.C.
P3 tests focused on three areas of measurement: Quality: How clear is the audio? Speed: How fast does the call connect? Reliability: Does the call connect and stay connected?
"VoLTE has been in operation for more than six months now, which is a very long time in the rapidly evolving wireless industry," said Bernhardt. "While our first U.S. benchmark was limited to just one metro area, it clearly shows that VoLTE is ready to replace legacy voice service and become the new default choice for voice calls across the nation."
VoLTE provides simultaneous voice and data over the LTE networks. By eliminating the need to carry voice calls on one network and data on another, VoLTE offers carriers many cost and operations benefits and sets the stage for a new generation of rich communications services (RCS).
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless launched VoLTE networks last year. Sprint has not yet launched the service in U.S. markets.
VoLTE vs. Circuit Switched Voice
Voice Quality: Which carrier has the best voice quality? Voice quality was measured by playing speech reference samples on the sending side and recording the transmitted samples on the receiving side. Speech quality was evaluated using an international measurement standard to derive a "Mean Opinion Score" (MOS) on a scale between 1 and 4.75. A higher score means better voice quality.
"From the average customer's perspective, all the carriers in Washington, D.C. provide a decent quality legacy voice service," Bernhardt said. "Compared to their legacy circuit switched voice services, however, all three carriers with VoLTE-enabled networks showed impressive improvement in voice call quality and connection times.
"AT&T and Verizon, which do not use wideband or HD in their circuit switched networks, showed the most dramatic improvement in clarity with VoLTE. VoLTE with its HD voice codecs lifts the VoLTE-preferred channels of the three VoLTE-carriers to speech quality scores around 3.5-3.6. Clearly, Sprint, which tied T-Mobile for the best circuit switched voice quality performance, has potential for improvement with VoLTE implementation," he said.
Speed: How fast do VoLTE calls connect? Circuit switched voice connections show average call setup times between 5 and 15 seconds. With VoLTE there was an impressive improvement in call connection times for all three VoLTE carriers, especially AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile was slightly slower, but still had very good results.
Reliability: What about dropped calls? All the carriers showed good performance in sustaining ongoing VoLTE calls. AT&T and T-Mobile hand-off ongoing VoLTE voice calls to their legacy networks when a caller travels outside of their LTE footprints. Verizon Wireless requires contiguous LTE coverage to sustain a VoLTE call. Overall, the VoLTE channel call setup success and dropped call ratios were on impressive levels for such a new technology. As VoLTE evolves there will be room for further network optimization and improvement.
International Comparison
The United States is the largest and most advanced mobile communications market in the world and one of the first to deploy VoLTE networks. But how do the VoLTE networks in Washington stack up to those in cities around the world and what gains can customers in those international cities expect from local VoLTE deployments?
After lagging behind many European metro areas in call setup times, P3 results show that U.S. carriers with commercial VoLTE deployments in Washington, D.C. have successfully leapfrogged the world's best wireless networks to significantly decrease connection times. For voice quality, the VoLTE networks in Washington, D.C. also performed better than the legacy networks of European cities, but the gap was not as wide as in call setup.
"The bottom line is many of the world's wireless networks can benefit from an upgrade to the latest VoLTE technology," Bernhardt said. "Our United States benchmark shows that improvement potential exists for many of these markets. It will be interesting to see if ongoing VoLTE optimization will move U.S. carriers further ahead in all of these key performance indicators and how the first VoLTE deployments in international markets will stack up."
Looking Ahead
Bernhardt said U.S. carriers still have a lot of work to do to implement interconnect interfaces between carriers and international roaming agreements to provide a full end-to-end VoLTE experience for the masses. And, consumers who wish to take advantage of VoLTE must have VoLTE-capable devices. The good news is these devices now are readily available and dominate today's smartphone sales.
P3 has more than a decade of experience in testing wireless network quality and service performance around the globe. Drawing on hundreds of thousands of voice and data measurements in over 42 countries, it has improved market transparency and provided mobile operators with a reliable way to measure and compare network quality. The company has provided consulting, engineering and testing services for U.S. carriers since 2007, and private network performance benchmarking since 2010.
For more information about the P3 U.S. Public Benchmark 2015, visit http://www.p3-group.com/p3-us-public-benchmark-2015.
About P3 communications Inc.
P3 communications is a leading international consulting, engineering and testing services company based in Morristown, N.J. It is part of the privately owned P3 Group, which has over 2,700 employees worldwide and $320 million in annual revenue. The company provides a broad portfolio of independent technical and management consulting services including network planning, engineering, end-to-end optimization, market intelligence, security, QoS and QoE testing, international benchmarking, device testing and acceptance services. It is recognized worldwide as the completely neutral authority on network quality. P3 works with clients around the world including wireless carriers, infrastructure vendors, device manufacturers, public safety organizations and regulatory authorities. For more information about the P3 Group visit http://www.p3-group.com.
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SOURCE P3 communications Inc.
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