GSM operators soon to lose voice revenue

There are strong indications that global system for mobile communications (GSM) operators in the country will soon lose voice service as its mainstream revenue source, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that this is coming against the backdrop of recent developments in the telecommunications landscape that saw the launch of Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) by ntel and Smile Communications.

VoLTE is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, with specific profiles for control and media planes of voice service on LTE. This approach results in the voice service control and media planes being delivered as data flows within the LTE data bearer.

This means that there is no dependency on or ultimately, requirement for the legacy circuit-switched voice network to be maintained. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than 3G UMTS and up to six times more than 2G GSM.

David Venn, chief executive officer, Spectranet, a 4G LTE internet service provider, explained that 4G LTE is designed for data while 3G is designed for voice with data capacity as well, he added that the telecommunications landscape in the country will soon change from a voice centric to data centric source of revenue just as WhatsApp has almost eroded revenue that GSM operators are making from short message service (SMS).

He hinged this development on the launch of voice over LTE (VoLTE) by ntel the new owners of Nitel and Smile Communications as well as MTN acquisition of Visafone with 800MGHZ spectrum which allows for superior data network.