© Fraunhofer-IIS-Kurt-Fuchs

Airtel India offering mobile telephony with EVS

The list of mobile operators that have launched VoLTE services powered by the 3GPP communication codec Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) is constantly growing. Most recently, a major provider on the Asian market joined the group.

Fraunhofer has been providing expertise and information to educate Asian telecom markets on EVS since 2015. India is the most recent addition to the codec’s availability list: The EVS-powered VoLTE service in the Airtel network (India’s second largest mobile operator, with around 350 million subscribers) is up and running and being used by an increasing number of subscribers.

Aiming to improve indoor coverage and tackle capacity problems, Airtel rolled out its commercial service using EVS (13.2 kbit/s channel-aware mode wideband) in mid-2019 and reached full national coverage in October of the same year. The channel-aware mode uses partial redundancy to improve concealment technologies, making EVS a robust audio codec that minimizes errors and quickly recovers from lost packets.

In the meantime, Airtel has started to roll out VoWiFi in India and plans to integrate EVS into this service as well. VoWiFi is particularly relevant for telecoms in the APAC region, as it improves indoor coverage and enables broadband traffic offloading. Implementing EVS ensures the best results for providers and consumers alike.

About EVS

The Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) technology was co-developed by Fraunhofer IIS and enhances speech services by covering the entire frequency range audible to humans. It supports bit rates from 5.9 kbit/s up to 128 kbit/s, which allows carriers to optimize the performance and sound quality of their mobile networks as required by their service. In addition, EVS helps wireless providers enhance network coverage, especially inside buildings. More information: www.iis.fraunhofer.de/evs

Header image © Fraunhofer IIS/Kurt Fuchs

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