BICS enables world’s first fully E2E VoLTE international call between Asia and Europe

Brussels, Belgium, 25 August 2015 – BICS, a global wholesale carrier for voice, mobile data and capacity services, has established the world’s first fully E2E VoLTE international call, between South Korean operator SK Telecom and Belgian operator Proximus. This important milestone will offer subscribers in the two countries the ability to exchange high definition, low latency, next generation enhanced voice services carried over the IPX networks of BICS and SK Telink, the international carrier services division of SK Telecom.

BICS has once again proven its dedication by enhancing its market leading IPX network with a powerful state-of-the-art IPX VoLTE Hub, enabling mobile operators to offer IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) services ubiquitously. IPX VoLTE Hub provides end-to-end solutions for international VoLTE interworking and roaming. IPX VoLTE Hub is empowered with intelligent routing, commercial transparency, protocol normalisation and media transcoding capabilities, which are vital in maintaining the high definition sound quality of VoLTE voice calls.

VoLTE stands out as the highest quality HD voice service, offering low-frequency LTE spectrum usage, enabling network efficiency and reduced operational expenditure for the mobile operators.

BICS’ IPX VoLTE Hub has been fully tested on commercially available devices and live LTE networks. It offers end-to-end service provisioning, billing and reporting services, alongside the abilities to seamlessly support the 4G to 3G voice transition and interwork with legacy circuit-switched voice if a VoLTE call is attempted to a handset, which is either non-compliant, or does not have LTE coverage. Additionally, BICS’ IPX VoLTE Hub enables the three critical VoLTE roaming models – Local Break with Home, Visited Based Routing and S8 Home Routing. IPX VoLTE Hub is designed to support fully enhanced IMS based services including: Video over LTE and Rich Communication Services (RCS).

Jin-Hyo Park, Senior Vice President and Head of Network Technology R&D Center at SK Telecom said: “SK Telecom prides itself on pushing the boundaries of innovation and this latest announcement further enhances our position as the service leader in the Republic of Korea. International VoLTE provides the best in class voice quality demanded by customers already enjoying the service domestically.”

Laurent Claus, Director Services Platforms & Cloud at Proximus added: “Providing exceptional quality of experience to customers is of paramount importance to us, and launching International VoLTE was the next logical step we needed to take to enhance our voice offering. The BICS platform enables us to offer services at the highest standards while keeping running costs and bandwidth demands low.”

“The launch of BICS IPX VoLTE Hub leverages our expertise and extensive experience of bringing innovative services to the market and being a one stop solution provider for these services,” said Jorn Vercamert, Vice President of BICS ‘s voice business. “We want to empower mobile operators to reinvigorate their offering to the end users. VoLTE is an “avant-garde” IMS service offering superior voice experience and paves the way for video and rich messaging services to enter the mainstream.

“During 2015-2016, VoLTE usage will increase as end users will begin to enjoy the superior quality communication in conjunction with high speed data usage.”

Tai-Ho An, Senior Vice President at SK Telink added: “We are dedicated to continually improving our services and providing end-users with the new era of enhanced call quality. By partnering with BICS, we have once again proved our commitment to offering our South Korean customers the best user experience possible.”