Electronics

Recently, according to the release of China Telecom Shanghai Company, Shanghai Telecom made the world's first First Call when making a phone call on home WiFi.

In the current network environment of Shanghai Telecom, First Call, which has the VoWiFi service with end-to-end traceability, has been opened, which will effectively solve the problems of voice and text messages caused by weak coverage in residential areas and other areas, so that 5G mobile phone users can also enjoy at home. Full-service Gigabit network experience. During the epidemic, the Shanghai Telecom R&D team successively opened up VoWiFi services that meet the national regulatory requirements in the test network and the current network environment, indicating that China Telecom VoWiFi has the conditions for trial commercial use.

Due to multiple factors such as frequency bands and site locations, it is even more difficult to achieve deep coverage of 5G networks in areas such as residential areas. In order to solve this problem, China Telecom promotes the integration of WiFi 6 and 5G to solve the indoor coverage problem, so that 5G users can have a better full-service experience at home, whether it is Internet access or voice and SMS services. To this end, under the guidance of China Telecom Group, led by Shanghai Telecom and participated by China Telecom Research Institute, other pilot provincial companies and other units, the "WiFi 6 and 5G integration to solve indoor coverage" group double project was established last year. The key work is to be responsible for promoting the research and development of 5G VoWiFi technology.

VoWiFi is not a new thing. Many foreign operators have launched VoWiFi services in the 4G era, allowing users to make calls through WiFi networks in areas with weak 4G network coverage, such as indoors. However, in my country, the VoWiFi business has not been officially launched, because VoWiFi has not met the relevant policy requirements in terms of traceability. For example, when a user makes an emergency call such as a fire alarm through VoWiFi, if the user does not actively report the address, the system cannot trace back to where the VoWiFi call was made. This has become the focus of the project team.

The project team finally developed an accurate traceability and authentication solution based on fixed-mobile integration. Through the two-factor authentication of users and home gateways, VoWiFi services can be reliably guaranteed and traced to the home accurately. The accuracy is higher than that of VoLTE. It has been recognized by experts from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, and solved the long-term difficulty that my country's VoWiFi cannot be commercialized because it cannot be traced to users.

In the early morning of May 20, Shanghai Telecom opened the world's first First Call for VoWiFi service with end-to-end traceability, and realized the two-way switching between VoLTE and VoWiFi in the simulated environment of the live network.

On June 10, in the current ZTE end-to-end network environment of Guizhou Telecom, the First Call of the first end-to-end VoWiFi service with traceability capability was completed, and traceability information was successfully recorded in the IMS phone bill.

At 0:00 on June 14, under the existing network environment of Shanghai Telecom composed of equipment from different manufacturers, First Call also got through.

Through research and testing, the project team determined the VoWiFi network selection strategy and switching parameter settings, and completed the "China Telecom VoWiFi Terminal Technical Specifications". The "China Telecom Mobile Terminal Demand White Paper" has also been completed. At present, 8 terminals and 6 chip platforms including Apple have been promoted to participate in the VoWiFi test and joint debugging.

The next work of the project team is to promote the commercial trial of the existing network. There is still a lot of work to be done in this regard, including completing the network element version upgrade related to the deployment of the existing network and source traceability. In terms of product configuration, it is necessary to complete the IT-related products, configuration, and billing transformation for the trial commercial use, and to expand the trial commercial use. terminal range, etc.