Verizon and AT&T announced today that they are working together to allow Voice over LTE calls between their customers. The carriers, which both previously announced the roll out of VoLTE technology earlier this year, said they expect VoLTE interoperability between their customers to arrive next year:
Engineers from both companies are working through a full set of requirements, beginning with extensive testing in lab environments and then moving to field trials. This approach ensures customers will have a seamless experience making VoLTE HD Voice calls between networks and lays the foundation for interoperability of other Rich Communications Services (RCS) such as video calls, rich messaging, and more in the future.
Verizon announced its rollout of VoLTE technology earlier this summer leading up to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launch in September, while AT&T (along with T-Mobile) also announced support for VoLTE and started rolling out the feature to customers. Before Verizon and AT&T’s rollout of VoLTE interoperability, the feature only works when making a call to a VoLTE capable device on the same network.
Both carriers commented that they hope to see others participate in working to make the feature available to customers across service providers.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
If you have VoLTE calling turned on with Verizon via the Advanced Calling feature set, then all of your calls get routed over LTE as long as you have LTE service. This allows use of simultaneous voice and data on Verizon. I can make VoLTE calls to anyone I want, but they just turn into regular calls once they leave Verizon.
HD Voice is a different story. It requires VoLTE calling as a base layer to support the higher bitrate audio codecs that are used in HD Voice. Not all carriers are using the same bitrate, nor do they connect to each other via VoIP style bridges, so interop between carriers is actually a big deal. Really cool, but most of the articles about VoLTE and HD Voice seem to confuse one for the other.
True, but you have to be in rock solid LTE territory. I shut the feature off. Yes, when I was on calls, it was nice to still have data available if I needed it, but the fact that 90% of my calls ended in failures, or, worse (because I think “call failed” appearing is noted by the network) me not being heard by anyone. A great feature, one I am glad they enabled, but I would much rather have WiFi Calling turned on. Much more useful feature for me, and I bet more customers than can benefit from VoLTE at the moment. I know Verizon is proud of their network, but they are also smug and think that because they are the best, they don’t have bad areas.
iSRS, I’m not sure how I will know when my iPhone call is made via VoLTE versus an ordinary cellular connection so I cannot comment on the success or quality of that yet.
For WiFi Calling, it’s a killer idea that is already less useful than in the past. When phone connections were more spotty and frequently dropped, the stability of WiFi showed promise (ignoring hand-off issues for now). However, I have found that WiFi speeds outside of my home are typically abysmal. Carrier data plans are becoming better value for money than a few years ago. The incidence of WiFi spoofing or eavesdropping makes public WiFi less desirable than as recently as two years ago.
Our preferences for one technology over another shift over time as costs go up or down, speeds vary, network capacity changes, and hardware and software enables more options than before. I didn’t expect to be a point where I will typically avoid WiFi over LTE connectivity, but here I am.
Until and unless security and capacity improve, I’m not sure that WiFi Calling will be much use outside the home.
AT&T has been rolling out it’s VoLTE for a while now and I didn’t know it until this past Saturday. My iPhone 6 Plus has been replaced 3 times because after about 5-15 minutes the call quality would be so bad that the other person couldn’t hear me talking. It would usually take a restart of the phone to fix the issue. Apple nor AT&T knew what was going on. This past Saturday, after my 3rd phone, I returned to the Apple store again. This time when I told the tech the issue he said, “Are you on AT&T?” I said, “Yes!”. He then went on to say that the VoLTE rollout that AT&T has been doing has been very flaky in various cities and they aren’t telling anyone about it. He then went into my settings and cut off the option for VoLTE… thus putting my calls back on the 4G spectrum. Guess what? It worked! Haven’t had a problem since then.
So… I’m not excited about the VoLTE thing as of yet. Maybe after they have it going for a year or so… but as for now my phone operates in Chicago much better over 4G. AT&T needs to get theirs right before mixing with Verizon.
My wife and I use iPhone 6’s on T-mobile. We knew VoLTE was in place, but didn’t realize what a big deal it was. Our calls to one another sound *spectacular*. FAR better call quality than any call I’ve ever heard on any mobile phone. Ever. Better sounding than FaceTime Audio, even. VoLTE call quality is the future, and the future sounds great!
Here’s my question and concern; considering AT&T users have always had the ability to use voice & data simultaneously, what is the incentive to have this setting turned on and off, ousted of better sounding voice quality? For me, calls sound fine (it’s a telephone) and I’m not inclined to be excited about clearer sounding calls when, for the most part, I’m only talking when I’m drinking. But my bigger concern is about data usage. My plan is priced according to my expected voice usage and data consumption. Most newer plans now include unlimited voice calls. Isn’t the switch to data-based calls simply going to burn up users data allotment? And from where do batteries get the biggest power drain, voice or data?
*damn autocorrect… ousted = aside
DRIVING not drinking LOL. Good thing I’m not drinking and texting (or driving).