Over the past few days we have been hearing VoLTE related news from a couple of major U.S. carriers. Not content with its rivals hogging the spotlight T-Mobile today made an announcement of its own. The carrier’s voice over LTE service went live in Seattle today for its existing Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Light and LG G Flex customers.
Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s chief technology officer, says that the carrier has been working hard on a LTE-Advanced version of VoLTE. T-Mobile has plans of launching it to more of its customers throughout the coming year. To take advantage of VoLTE, Magenta subscribers with the aforementioned devices simply need to get the latest software update. That can be done by going to the settings application and heading to the “About device” menu.
VoLTE is the next frontier in LTE. It brings data and voice onto the same radio layer. For end users this means faster call setup times as well as being able to access LTE data speeds even on a call. T-Mobile’s HD Voice service is included with VoLTE, it first launched this service nationwide in January 2013.
As the carrier continues to build out its Wideband LTE network, Ray commits that VoLTE will be launched in additional cities with more devices in the coming months.