news Optus has announced that it is rolling out Voice over LTE (VoLTE) across its 4G Plus mobile network in Australia’s major cities.
VoLTE allows users with compatible devices to make and receive calls over the 4G network. Until now, only data services have been offered over 4G, the telco said.
Initially, the new service will be available only to users with Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge mobile phones, but Optus said it has plans to include more devices soon.
The firm’s postpaid consumer and small-to-medium business (SMB) customers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra CBD metros areas will be in the first wave of the VoLTE rollout.
“VoLTE provides customers a number of benefits including high definition quality voice calls, faster call connections and the ability for customers to multitask on their device while browsing and making a call over a 4G connection,” said Dennis Wong, acting Managing Director of Networks at Optus.
“We’ve been testing and tweaking VoLTE for the best customer experience and we’re excited Optus customers will start to see the benefits of this technology on our 4G Plus network,” Wong explained.
Carrying the call on 4G, Optus in a statement, improves the experience for customers – in particular those who like to multitask on the phone while making a call.
“We’ve all been on a call when we’ve needed to quickly look up the address of a restaurant or download a file from an email. With VoLTE, this will all be a lot faster and easier because you’ll stay on a 4G connection,” Wong said.
“Optus will continue to add capability to other devices and remains focused on expanding our VoLTE footprint to further locations, particularly in regional Australia,” he concluded.
VoLTE works by utilising 4G technology to make calls, instead of dropping down to 3G when call connection takes place.
According to online sources, the technology has up to three times more voice and data capacity than 3G UMTS and up to six times more than 2G GSM.
Additionally, VoLTE frees up bandwidth due to packets headers that are smaller than those of unoptimised VoIP/LTE.
Image credit: Alpha, Creative Commons
trying to milk the white elephant trash as much as possible. I hope to see the day it’s done over VOIP and LiFi networks. No crappy insecure radios.
Huh?
VoLTE requires IMS-AKA and encrypted voice by default plus it’s on its on radio channels
I will be watching this closely as to how widely this will be available and the stability of the availability. I live in Bundaberg QLD and am currently with Telstra for their indoor voice coverage. I use my mobile for a lot of voice calls for work including at home and currently have to go out into the back yard on an Optus mobile. People living a few houses away don’t have this problem so I seem to be in one of those odd grey spots so if VoLTE was operating on 700mhz this could help compared to the 1800mhz 3g network.
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