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Research and Markets: Behind the VoLTE Curtain - Independent Performance Analysis of T-Mobile's Voice Over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) ServiceResearch and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/kqq2q3/signals_ahead) has announced the addition of the "Signals Ahead - Behind the VoLTE Curtain, Pt. 4" report to their offering. This industry conducted an independent performance analysis of T-Mobile's (News - Alert) Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) service. The testing took place in late June and early July in Northern and Southern California, and included the operator's VoLTE, 3G HD voice service, and Skype Voice for comparison purposes. Consistent with all of our previous VoLTE-related studies, we collaborated with Spirent Communications (News - Alert) and Accuver Americas. Spirent provided us with its Nomad User Experience Analytics System and engineering support to conduct the call quality tests using the industry accepted POLQA algorithm. Accuver Americas provided us with its XCAL-M data collection tool and XCAP post processing software to analyze the lower layer interactions of the smartphones with the cellular network. We look forward to working with both companies on future studies, including ore test campaigns related to VoLTE and RCS. For these tests we used three different smartphones - a Galaxy S6 (Samsung (News - Alert) chipset and VoLTE solution), a Galaxy S5 (Qualcomm chipset and VoLTE solution) and an iPhone 5 smartphone. We used the three different smartphones to see if the results varied across platforms. All of our tests involved mobile originated and mobile terminated calls. Generally, we were stationary when we conducted these tests but for purposes of testing handovers, we did interject a bit of mobility into the study (hence the peculiar reference to the little red wagon in the title of the report). We primarily used the VoLTE, 3G HD voice service, and Skype (News - Alert) Voice tests to collect baseline results which we could use to compare with the VoWi-Fi results, although these tests also proved useful when it came to identifying potential interoperability issues. Cutting to the chase, our summary-level conclusion is that VoWi-Fi is as good or as bad as the underlying Wi-Fi network. We obtained results which suggest the typical consumer would never notice the difference when switching from VoLTE to VoWi-Fi, let along the actual handover itself. Conversely, we also documented results which weren't as favorable. In many, but not all, of these instances, we believe that other factors were involved. All this and more in this issue of Signals Ahead. Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Key Observations 3. VoWi-Fi Voice Quality Analysis - Residential 4. VoWi-Fi Voice Quality Analysis - Commercial Public Wi-Fi Access Point (News - Alert) 5. Things that make you go Hmmm 6. Test Methodology 7. Final Thoughts Companies Mentioned - Accuver Americas - Spirent Communications - T-Mobile - Samsung For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/kqq2q3/signals_ahead
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