VoIP has had its fair share of the market in communications for some time, and now the voice communications technology is expected to get a boost from Voice over LTE (VoLTE), Infonetics Research (News - Alert) is reporting.

According to the latest market analysis, the global service provider VoIP and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment market grew 12 percent in 2014, to $4.2 billion.

VoLTE is a lot like VoIP in many ways, but VoLTE utilizes a data connection through the LTE (News - Alert) spectrum rather than wired networks. The technology is being actively tested by infrastructure firms as they prepare to make VoLTE more widespread in the United States.

“The service provider VoIP and IMS market posted solid growth in 2014 due to VoLTE deployments and network transformation projects. We feel positive about 2015 with VoLTE activity continuing and voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) beginning to ramp,” Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research, said in a press statement.

VoLTE offers a higher audio quality while using less energy, so it certainly is a win for customers. Of course, it comes down to price. What VoIP has done for communications costs, VoLTE must surpass to make it a complete knockout.

For carriers, the cost can be significant as they add bandwidth to their LTE networks. VoLTE also means no more “minute counting,” thereby extending savings onto the customer. That means cell phones will become 100 percent pure data.

In this case, VoLTE is a boon for the VoIP industry as operators continue to transform their networks to VoLTE. Voice is the major revenue generator for operators, and VoLTE is now being touted as the technology of choice for delivering voice to LTE networks.