TNS Signs Two Tier One Operators for VoLTE Services

Two tier one North American operators are responding to their growing subscriber demands for VoLTE services by signing new agreements with Transaction Network Services (TNS) to use its VoLTE Registry solution.

According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the number of worldwide VoLTE subscriptions is projected to reach 5.4 billion by the end of 2023, up from 617 million in 2017, and will account for around 80 percent of combined LTE and 5G subscriptions.

TNS’ VoLTE Registry makes available a shared registry into which carriers provision the phone numbers of their VoLTE enabled devices, as well as routing information for reaching those devices, over an IMS infrastructure. This information is then shared between operators in a controlled manner allowing discovery of and routing to the VoLTE enabled handsets.  TNS’ VoLTE Registry is built on top of its robust and highly scalable Carrier ENUM platform.

Bill Versen, Chief Product Officer for TNS, said: “Our VoLTE Registry provides business-critical scalability to cover subscribers’ VoLTE needs, while at the same time being flexible around interoperability requirements, making an operator’s infrastructure more efficient and streamlined. We are proud to have created a best-in-class solution which comes with an enhanced range of features, including the destination sensitive response facility.”

TNS’ destination sensitive response facility allows TNS to tailor responses to queries for certain destinations or numbers based on provisioning parameters which have been defined by the customer.

Prior to using TNS, the two North American operators used a variety of different solutions, mainly from hardware and IMS core vendors. TNS’ VoLTE Registry solution enables data sharing and relieves the headache associated with complex data management processes. It resolves route lookup queries faster by using one shared registry rather than using the standard GSMA distributed model that reaches out to the National Root ENUM service.

David Kaemmer, Vice President of Sales for TNS’ Wholesale Telecoms business, said: “We are delighted to be helping these operators strengthen their VoLTE capabilities. Using TNS will allow these operators to bring together their ENUM requirements into one easy to access facility and to focus their resources on other core objectives. Call set up times are typically reduced and being VoLTE-enabled will help contribute to subscribers receiving improved voice quality.

“These operators also chose to work with TNS because of our ability to perform VoLTE endpoint discovery and to access the range of reporting capabilities included with the solution. For one of these operators, we are also helping to provide an intra-company VoLTE registry, replacing two existing services which were proving time consuming to maintain and manage.”

The TNS VoLTE Registry solution uses consistent ENUM server formats to avoid interoperability challenges. If the terminating operator is a participant of the registry the query can be resolved locally in just a few milliseconds.

From small rural operators in the US to the largest multi-national carriers, TNS has over 500 operator customers and addresses the full needs of wireless and wireline operators in the US and globally. TNS’ networks have been specifically designed and configured for the transmission of transaction-related time sensitive data and support a variety of widely accepted communications protocols.