Network Function Virtualization: Mitigating the Impact of VoLTE on the Policy and the Charging System

Abstract

Needless to say that telecommunications’ operators are showing increasing interests toward solving the dilemma of optimizing network resources while offering state-of-the-art quality of service. Recently, operators have shown an increasing interest to investigate solutions for better control on network utilization, service usage and monetization. They also noticed a significant growth in Diameter signaling and more specifically in signaling related to policy management. A massive introduction of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service will have a significant impact on the systems handling policy signaling, as VoLTE will reshape the landscape of Long Term Evolution (LTE) policies and completely change the way policy management works. However, this massive approach is meant to provide significant competitive advantages for operators offering LTE services and still require circuit-switched network to provide voice service. The biggest challenge for those operators is to find an appropriate solution, scalable enough to handle the unpredictable growth of Diameter signaling. In this paper, a model, based on Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology is proposed, able to address the challenges of massively introducing VoLTE, without impacting existing services and without jeopardizing current revenues. In presented approach, the standard VoLTE call flows, referenced user’s behavior and latest experiments’ results on NFV technology are used.