December 7, 2009 | Unstrung - Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) is revoking its membership of the Voice over LTE via Generic Access (VoLGA) Forum , a sign that support for the group might be waning.

The move is significant because Ericsson's support, or lack of it, for mobile industry initiatives is important, given that it's the largest single global supplier of mobile infrastructure and one of the early movers in the emerging market for LTE systems.

Ericsson's move is made more notable because the Forum is promoting just one of a number of approaches to arguably the most important issue currently facing mobile operators: how to deliver legacy voice and messaging services over LTE networks. (See Voice Over LTE's Future Cloudy and Forum Tackles Voice Over LTE.)

LTE, as a packet-based network technology, doesn't support legacy, circuit-switched traffic, and that's an issue because, despite the growing popularity of mobile data services, legacy voice and SMS services currently account for 85 percent of the world's $800 billion-per-year mobile services market, according to Pyramid Research .

read more