5G roadblock: labor

Mon Dec 30 22:42:35 UTC 2019

On 12/30/19 1:35 PM, Brandon Martin wrote:
> On 12/30/19 4:14 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
>> The latency argument is what interests me. Supposedly 4G's latency 
>> and jitter are tough on voip. If that improves there is just no 
>> reason for TDM to phones which is a significant development because 
>> cell phones are probably the largest deployment of old style PSTN 
>> stuff these days as landlines wither and die. I would think that 
>> carriers would embrace that since it would be a cost-down, but I'm 
>> sure I'm wrong since that would be admit defeat to IP.
>
> VoLTE is already essentially VoIP, including packet switched media, 
> with some MAC layer QoS guarantees as I understand it. Now, maybe 
> those MAC layer guarantees essentially amount to a dedicated OFDMA 
> sub-carrier during a voice call.  That I cannot speak to as I'm not 
> intimately familiar with the LTE/LTE-A air interface.
>
> I can say that plain ol' best-effort LTE data services are generally 
> sufficient for VoIP in my experience if you have "good coverage".  
> That means what I'd generally consider "toll-grade" quality in terms 
> of latency and, more inmportantly, jitter.  SSH is similarly quite 
> usable generally.  If you're on the fringe of a cell or have a cell 
> that's overloaded, YMMV.

Oh, I didn't know that. Seems like it's a relatively new thing. Seems 
like they went to a lot of trouble to essentially do what voip does. Or 
maybe not? I've been poking around trying figure out what's going on 
under the hood with wifi calling, and it seems like they're just 
tunneling PSTN bits over the internet. If true, that's certainly a quick 
and dirty hack. Maybe they're doing something similar for volte?

Mostly what I want in the future is a dollop of EF QoS bits and let me 
determine how to use them...

Mike