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  • apinkel - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    I'm starting to hear more and more about carriers transitioning to VoLTE... which would seem to make a lot of sense for them as it reduces the amount of resources tied up in running a network that has to use multiple techonologies with each requiring it's own frequencies, handset radios, personnel requiring training in multiple technologies for support, etc..

    Which is all good. However I haven't yet heard what the benefits of VoLTE are for the average cellphone user. Possibly better voice quality or battery handset battery life due to the need to only have one radio in the device?
  • A5 - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    It's just something that has to be done so that carriers don't have to maintain their 3G networks forever since all future network techs are going to be IP-only.

    Theoretically carriers could allocate more bandwidth to voice calls to increase call quality, but I imagine most carriers will keep call bandwidth low to increase range. It shouldn't have a significant effect on battery life.
  • metafor - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    Yes. The additional benefit is that eventually, if GSM/CDMA networks are no longer needed, that spectrum could be used for IP-only data transmission instead.
  • apinkel - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    That's my take on it as well.

    Just confirms that I might choose carrier A over carrier B due to their coverage, whether or not they offer 4G data, unlimited data, etc. but there's nothing about VoLTE that would draw me to a specific carrier.
  • dagamer34 - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    HD voice codecs which lead to improved voice quality, even if the other side isn't capable of sending the same quality back.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    Considering how much trouble Verizon has been having with their LTE network being down, I don't think I'm ready to trust it with voice as well.
  • rocketbuddha - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    So now will the "Unlimited" Talk and "Unlimited" text also go the way of "Unlimited" data? :D
  • SunLord - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link

    If I'm not mistaken this is basically what Sprints Network Vision plans having them doing with their network once they convert to LTE on 1900Mhz and transition the CDMA network to 800MHz. After they transition to the 800MHz CDMA network they were planing to roll out LTE on part of it and deploying VoLTE using something like the above to allow VoLTE to CDMA transitions since CDMA signals cover a far larger area then any LTE signal can.
  • bnowrooz - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link


    To me there is something that doesn't make sense about this specific test and I am guessing it's set up this way to be more favorable to Qualcomm. I put my full logic on my page... sonlte.com

    Seems like VZW and USCellular have taken the lead in VoLTE with Sprint publicly supporting yet we are reading a press release about a WCDMA/LTE SRVCC transition? Is ATT suddenly and/or silently pushing harder than everyone else??

    Just thinking out loud!

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