Interop Technologies drives European expansion with Taqua VOWiFi and VOLTE Solutions

Taqua, a leading supplier of mobile and fixed communications solutions, announced today that Interop Technologies has placed a follow-on order for Taqua's virtual mobile core and mobile client to enable the expansion of their Voice over WiFi (VOWiFi) and Voice over LTE (VOLTE) service offerings in Europe.

Interop Technologies enables telecommunications service providers of all sizes to launch new virtualised IP communication services via the private Interop Cloud, which utilises the latest in network function virtualisation (NFV) technology. By incorporating Taqua's virtual mobile core and mobile client into its CorePlusXSM solution, Interop enables its customers to quickly launch in demand IP services like VOWiFi and VOLTE.

"WiFi calling from Interop's CorePlusXSM is allowing operators to offer advanced voice services today, while providing a seamless path to VOLTE and the all-IP network," said John Dwyer, President and CEO of Interop Technologies. "We've had a tremendously successful partnership with Taqua in the North American market, and anticipate the continued success of the relationship as we bring our industry-leading CorePlusXSM solution to Europe."

"VOWiFi is an important service offering that operators can utilise to solve real-world coverage issues immediately," said Eric Pratt, Taqua's CEO. "We're working with Interop to reduce the barrier of entry to advanced IP voice and messaging services for European service providers with a robust WiFi calling solution they can deploy now."

Since 2002, Interop has provided mobile operators telco-grade core network services including advanced messaging, device activation and connectivity gateway solutions. VOWiFi and VOLTE are two of the components of Interop's CorePlusXSM solution - a virtualised IMS core and IP services suite. CorePlusXSM reduces the cost and complexity typically associated with purchasing and deploying an IMS core, which is a key competitive advantage of the offering. The CorePlusXSM IP suite includes VOWiFi, VOLTE, VOLTE-Roaming and RCS.

Taqua's Virtual Mobile Core (VMC) is a converged 4G mobile core enabling rapid deployment of next -generation mobile voice and messaging services including VOWiFi, VOLTE and Small Cells. The VMC is a carrier-grade software product that converges a number of 3GPP standard functions including a telephony application server (TAS), IP short message gateway (IP-SM-GW), service consistency and continuity application server (SCC-AS), and media resource function (MRF). It works with standards-based VOWiFi clients, such as the native WiFi Calling capability in Apple's iOS 8 as well as Taqua's mobile client for Android devices.

Taqua's mobile client is a standards-compliant VOWiFi client for smartphones that's available in embedded and downloadable versions. The client has been used in all major mobile operator VOWiFi deployments, and is integrated into over 100 handset models by some of the world's largest vendors, including Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Huawei and ZTE.