Taqua Gears Up For VoWiFi, VoLTE

At the ongoing International CTIA Wireless 2012 show in New Orleans, Taqua LLC, a supplier of convergence switching and small-cell deployment solutions, announced its TCS6100 Small Cell Convergence core has been upgraded to enable deployment of several million subscribers while offering a new set of Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) via a Circuit Switch Fallback (eCSFB) implementation.

The TCS6100 Small Cell Convergence Server (TCS6100) extends macro-network feature and functionality to femtocell subscribers while providing femto-to-macro handoff. Via a 3GPP2-compliant SIP-based architecture, the TCS6100 delivers voice, messaging and data convergence while providing supplementary, regulatory and emergency services for the service provider’s femtocell or other small cell subscribers, Taqua says.

“This new small-cell core release is a significant milestone for Taqua,” notes CMO Scott Weidenfeller. “Our customers are seeing strong demand for femtocells that require high-capacity nodes to accommodate increased traffic by smartphones. These new capacity updates will satisfy this growing demand, while our VoWiFi and VoLTE enhancements will provide additional deployment flexibility.”

With the Taqua TCS6100’s VoWiFi capability, carriers can offer Wi-Fi via smartphone handsets that leverage Taqua’s Small Cell Core.  Within this application, the subscriber can use his or her phone number while preserving all of the existing calling-plan features and functionality.

“Historically, VoWiFi offerings have required the subscriber to utilize a secondary number and additional software launched from their handset to launch or receive a call,” Weidenfeller explains. “Taqua’s approach is to deliver the control of these calls from the operator’s small-cell core with the TCS6100. The pre-loaded handset software will run in the background using VoWiFi and be completely transparent to the subscribers.”

As part of the company’s efforts to support the carrier’s evolution to VoLTE services, the Taqua TCS6100 will provide the eCSFB function. As an all-IP network architecture designed for data, LTE technology does not inherently support legacy circuit-switch (CS) domain services. The Taqua TCS6100’s eCSFB capabilities will enable circuit-switched voice and SMS services to be delivered to LTE devices within the requirements set forth in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8. As such, the TCS6100 will set up a new interface between the legacy mobile switching center (MSC) and the mobile management entity (MME) in the LTE core network. When an LTE handset makes or receives voice calls, the TCS6100 will manage the "fall back" to the 3G or 2G network to complete the call.