Unicom, Ericsson, Qualcomm demo VoLTE over Cat-M1

China Unicom, Ericsson and Qualcomm have completed the first demonstration of LTE Cat-M1 Voice over LTE use cases.

The demonstrations at last week’s Mobile World Congress Shanghai involved providing connectivity for a fire alarm trigger panel and a GPS emergency tracking device.

The demos were conducted using Unicom’s spectrum, Ericsson’s IoT and VoLTE capable network infrastructure and IoT devices equipped with Qualcomm multimode IoT modems.

Adding VoLTE support to Cat-M1 allows IoT devices based on the cellular IoT technology to make voice calls as well as sending data.

The demonstrated showed that emergency communications devices can be designed or retrofitted to  support wireless connectivity, supporting voice communication between the devices and emergency centers.

In the case of the fire alarm trigger panels, people triggering an alarm were able to describe the situation to first responders and get immediate guidance.

The GPS emergency tracking device demonstration meanwhile showcased the ability of such devices to send GPS location data while enabling VoLTE calls for coordinated emergency response.

“China Unicom aims to drive the development of the IoT and accelerate cellular network development and large-scale business implementation by constructing the leading 4G FDD network,” Unicom executive director and senior vice president Guanglu Shao said.

“We launched NB-IoT on a pre-commercial basis on May 12 in Shanghai. This cooperation on eMTC with Ericsson and Qualcomm is a new venture intended to boost social intelligence and the Internet of Everything through wide cooperation and the construction of leading networks.”