Nokia (News - Alert) Networks is seeing more growth in its VoLTE technology outside the U.S. The company recently completed a rollout of VoLTE in the United Arab Emirates for the carrier du. The du VoLTE network is the first commercial VoLTE network in the Middle East.
Nokia sees Apple’s (News - Alert) introduction of the iPhone 6 driving demand for VoLTE services worldwide.
“Ever since the device announcement from Apple, it’s pushed development time even faster,” Jane Rygaard, head of CEM, OSS and Core marketing at Nokia Networks, told RCR Wireless News.
While U.S. carriers, including Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile (News - Alert) are building VoLTE networks, it’s seen limited success outside of the U.S. until now.
VoLTE has a lot of growth potential outside the U.S., especially in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region, because there are so few implementations already. LTE (News - Alert) offers higher voice call quality, which has been called “HD voice.” It also has lower data requirements for carriers.
The latter might be attractive to smaller carriers that don’t have the resources to support massive numbers of users the way U.S. networks can. On the other hand, American carrier struggled to keep up with the massive amounts of data that smartphones like the iPhone generated initially.
LTE can also help carriers compete with OTT (Over the Top) services like Skype (News - Alert), since it allows for voice and video calling the way Skype does without the need for both parties to have an app installed.
It also doesn’t hurt that LTE networks are fast. Nokia had one client request to put a delay in the network because of how fast it was.
People outside of the U.S., especially in the developing world, are adopting smartphones in lieu of conventional PCs. These devices are also the way many people in these regions experience the Internet for the first time.
Edited by Alisen Downey