People are quick to embrace new technology, especially when it makes things faster and easier. They are also quick to forget how things used to be. I first got a cell phone in 1998 because I was setting up offices from the ground up so I had no access to a phone except for the pay phone on the street. Back then, my Motorola flip phone was about the size of two school erasers, with battery life of about 30 minutes.
These days we can use our mobile devices to make phone calls, have video chats, check emails, send text messages through over-the-top (OTT) apps and SMS, browse the Internet and, of course, play games. Just about every channel of a well-rounded rich communication suite (RCS) is now available at our fingertips. But it seems that there is still more we can do with our smartphones. Over the past couple of years, all of the major carriers have been deploying LTE services all over the world, just about the entire U.S. now has LTE service.
You may have noticed that some wireless providers, such as AT&T (News - Alert) and T-Mobile offer the ability to search the Internet while you are on a call, while Verizon and Sprint do not. That is because the latter is still running on CDMA networks which do not allow voice and data over the same circuit. One technology that can resolve this issue is VoLTE.
VoLTE is an acronym for Voice over LTE (News - Alert). This is technology which is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, with specific profiles for control and media planes of voice service on LTE. This approach allows voice services to be delivered as data flows within the LTE data bearer.
Essentially, this means that there is no dependency on the legacy circuit-switched voice network to be maintained. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than 3G UMTS and it frees up bandwidth because VoLTE’s packets headers are smaller than those of un-optimized VoIP/LTE. Since the wireless carriers have limited spectrum to work with, VoLTE will be more efficient and lead to better quality calls, faster Web surfing and possibly new features for the user.
Over the past nine months, both AT&T and Verizon (News - Alert) have been in the process of rolling out VoLTE services to their customers. Up until recently, these services could only be used with the provider’s own network, however earlier this week, AT&T and Verizon announced that they are working to ensure that VoLTE calls made by customers on the different carriers can interconnect with one another.
One reason that we are beginning to see a greater push to use VoLTE is September’s release of the iPhone 6. The two models’ use of Wi-Fi and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) for voice and video calling could eventually have a major impact on how phone calls are handled in the enterprise. On its website, Apple (News - Alert) flaunts the iPhone's Wi-Fi voice and video calling feature as a good solution "when you don’t have a good cellular signal." After all, what good is a cell phone without a cellular signal?
A lot of strides are being made in order to be able to use VoLTE, including companies that deal with communication software who are delivering solutions that allow for HD voice, video conferencing and scheduling. Unfortunately, there is still the case of the phone itself. You will only be able to access the service if you have one of a handful of new phones. While the new iPhone 6 models support the new calling method, last year’s iPhone 5s does not.
Another factor which affects VoLTE service is that while the wireless carriers are in the process of deploying it, T-Mobile (News - Alert) and Verizon are offering VoLTE nationwide but only through towers they’ve already upgraded to LTE service. On the other hand, AT&T is only offering VoLTE in a handful of markets. There is an important item that still needs to be taken into consideration, if a customer is on a VoLTE call and drops out of LTE coverage, the call will disconnect.
According to the business section of the Buffalo News, as the new service rolls out more widely, these issues will eventually disappear and VoLTE has the potential to revamp what consumers should expect out of a traditional cellphone call.
Edited by Alisen Downey