New Report Details Rapidly Expanding Voice over New Radio Ecosystem with Growing Number of Operators also Publicly Investing in the Technology
LONDON, UK – 18TH OCTOBER 2021 – The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today confirmed that 42 devices and 40 5G chipsets from four vendors have been announced supporting Voice over New Radio (VoNR) technology. In the GSA’s new “VoNR Market Report” it also shares that numerous operators are now heavily investing in the technology for their 5G standalone networks.
With the introduction of the 5G non-standalone networks, voice services were enabled by continued use of LTE and 2G/3G infrastructures. However, 5G standalone networks (both public and private) require a new approach given that there isn’t a legacy infrastructure to fall back on and VoNR has been designed to tackle this issue.
The GSA has identified 40 announced 5G chipsets with stated support for VoNR from 4 vendors. This includes 5 discrete modems and 35 mobile processors/platforms. Of these, 36 are known to be commercially available, including 4 discrete modems and 32 mobile processors and platforms. Chipsets are commercially available from Mediatek, Qualcomm, Samsung and UNISOC.
GSA has also catalogued 16 operators publicly announced as investing in VoNR in some way or another. Of those, 8 are evaluating/testing/trialling, 3 are understood to be planning to deploy, 3 are deploying the technology while one has soft-launched services and one is offering limited VoNR as part of a market trial of its new 5G SA network.
“Investments in VoNR are growing rapidly and given that to date only a fraction of the more than 80 mobile network operators publicly identified as working on 5G SA have yet announced investments in the technology, we expect to see considerable further growth in the near-term,” said Joe Barrett, President of the GSA. “Looking beyond the standard application of VoNR, it also offers considerable potential for value-added services which can help drive additional operator revenue streams. We will continue to provide updates on the VoNR market and are looking forward to seeing it develop.”
The VoNR Market Report can be downloaded for free here: https://gsacom.com/paper/global-progress-to-voice-over-new-radio-vonr-october-2021/ (registration required).
About GSA
GSA is the voice of the global mobile ecosystem representing companies engaged in the supply of infrastructure, semiconductors, test equipment, devices, applications and mobile support services. The organisation plays a central role in promoting 3GPP technology, advocating spectrum policies and stimulating IMT industry development. The association is a single source of information for industry reports and market intelligence.
The GSA GAMBoD database is a unique search and analysis tool that has been developed to enable searches of LTE and 5G devices and new global data on Mobile Broadband Networks, Technologies and Spectrum (NTS). Results are presented as a list or in charts. Charts may be inserted into documents or presentations, subject to accreditation of GSA as the source.
GAMBoD is a resource dedicated to promoting the success and growth of the Mobile Broadband (MBB) industry and ecosystem and is fully available to all employees of GSA Executive and Ordinary Member companies and GSA Associates who subscribe to the service. More information on GAMBoD is available here: https://gsacom.com/gambod/
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