15 for Wireless: Accedian Networks on analytics, VoLTE and SDN

What are the implications of Voice over LTE and software-defined networking/network function virtualization when it comes to network analytics and management?
In this week’s inaugural 15 for Wireless, I talked with Scott Sumner, VP of solution development at Accedian Networks, about those topics. There are a series of challenges in VoLTE deployment, and one of the interesting ones that he makes clear is the issue of backhaul architecture challenges, particularly in a small cell environment, in keeping latency down in VoLTE. Every bit of distance or additional network aggregation point, etc. adds latency, and as Scott illustrates, there are likely going to have to be more distribution of network elements in order to get the right pieces closer to users to maintain good VoLTE calls.
Watch the interview:

I had a chance to listen to field recordings of VoLTE calls at a session during Rohde & Schwarz’s LTE Innovation Summit earlier this year, and it made clear to me just how much of a technical challenge that wireless operators are facing. I don’t usually pay much attention to voice quality on my phone — it can be pretty mediocre as long as it isn’t bad — but the HD-quality of a good VoLTE call was noticeably excellent. Unfortunately, the field recordings also made clear that even a tiny amount of packet loss just wrecks the whole thing — entire words and phrases were dropped entirely.
This was actually my second conversation with Scott this week; I talked to him as I was wrapping up my upcoming report on telecom analytics and actionable intelligence. Ever since I first started hearing about SDN and NFV, I’ve been wondering what those things meant for the future of hardware vendors such as, say, Juniper Networks. If one of the main attractions of SDN is being able to use less expensive, off-the-shelf hardware rather than purpose-built, how do hardware vendors maintain relevance (and revenues)? Scott mentioned that at the moment, SDN controllers that are actually self-sufficient (based on data inputs from the network, so that the vaunted flexibility of SDN can actually be utilized) don’t exist off-the-shelf today — they have to be custom-built. So is this the path forward for equipment vendors who embrace SDN? That they won’t be making money, or at least not much, off of the physical hardware that is doing the processing, but that they might very well be the source for the control, orchestration and analytics integration that will make SDN/NFV work? Things to think about.
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