Abstract
Mobile network operators are increasingly striving to substitute legacy telecommunication technologies in their networks with the contemporary ones. Modern, future-proof architecture that provides better service quality, requires easier and cheaper maintenance, and consequently brings greater financial benefits is the main driving force for that action. In this moment, Long Term Evolution (LTE) deployment is a goal most mobile network operators are aspiring to. This paper describes presently ongoing changes in the mobile communication networks from the perspective of voice services they provide. Namely, LTE network is, so far, mainly recognized as a “data oriented” network. Having in mind enormous mobile data traffic increase, deployment of that kind of network is fully understandable and justified. However, voice services are still important part of telecommunications’ market offer. So, the above mentioned changes are leading not only toward satisfaction of growing needs regarding mobile data traffic, but also toward utilization of LTE network attributes for the purposes of voice communication. Complete transformation of mobile networks architecture and evolution of traditional voice communication will occur in the process. So far, that evolution has resulted with development of a mechanism know as voice over LTE. However, the mentioned changes are coming gradually and will take a certain time to be fully accomplished. In the meantime, some transition solutions are defined and deployed, in order to enable uninterrupted provisioning of voice services. Their description is included in the paper as well. At the end, relevant forecasts of several network parameters have been discussed.
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