GSA Market Report: Global Progress to Voice over New Radio (VoNR) – October 2021
The provision of voice services has evolved since the launch of mobile phones, from being the primary purpose of a mobile device, to one of many important purposes, and has evolved from an analogue technology to a digital technology, from a circuit-switched approach to a packet-switched system over IP in the form of VoLTE (using IP Multimedia Subsystem, IMS). New codecs (such as AMR-WB and EVS) have also been introduced along the way to improve call quality.
With the introduction of the 5G non-standalone networks, voice services were enabled by continued use of LTE and 2G/3G infrastructures, but 5G standalone networks (public and private) require a new approach. They need to be able to carry QoS-guaranteed voice services (as opposed to over-the-top voice applications), but there is no legacy infrastructure to fall back on.
Voice over New Radio (VoNR) is designed to meet this challenge. VoNR is also expected to bring improvements in latency, call quality and improved integration with applications and services using 5G data at the same time. VoNR is anticipated to drive innovation in conferencing, augmented and virtual reality applications over 5G networks.
Additionally, there needs to be a mechanism for devices to use to LTE, or 2G/3G voice networks when outside the coverage of a 5G standalone network. EPS Fallback (EPS-FB) is an early introduction step to VoNR until sufficient NR low-band or low mid-band coverage has been deployed.
Chipset and device vendors have already brought products to market that are announced as VoNR- capable and public network operators are now actively experimenting with, and in a few cases starting to deploy, the technology. Experimentation with VoNR in private 5G networks is also just beginning (it will be especially important for mission-critical 5G standalone networks).
GSA is actively monitoring the progress of the VoNR market and this paper highlights its current state of development, including a review of chipset availability, device availability and progress in terms of testing and deployment of VoNR within networks.
GSA Market Report: Global Progress to Voice over New Radio (VoNR) – October 2021
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