The carrier war is in full swing here in the United States, and we can only hope that it ends up benefitting the consumer in the long run. T-Mobile, at its expletive-ridden press conference last week, announced that it hopes to roll out improved voice calling this year when it starts selling the iPhone 5. AT&T is obviously about to face some heavy competition from Magenta, and it’s going to have to do whatever it can to keep up.
While speaking on Monday, AT&T senior vice president Kris Rinne commented on the possibility of the carrier improving its voice calling features. Rinne said that it is definitely an area of interest for AT&T and that it hopes to roll-out support for its HD Voice technology later this year when it starts routing calls of its LTE network.
“HD Voice is part of our voice over LTE strategy,” Rinne said at the VentureBeat Mobile Summit in Sausalito, California.
AT&T has been heavily criticized for its poor voice quality in the past, most notably when the iPhone originally launched. Rinne claims that those issues are behind them for the most part, though.
“I think we’ve taken that off the table in terms of a competitive challenge,” Rinne said.
In addition to rolling out its HD Voice technology this year, AT&T also has several other things to do in order to improve its network overall. The carrier is working on “advanced LTE” which reduces interference on the network, as well as bonds traffic from various frequencies together.
Finally, AT&T is also looking to take advantage of “over-the-top service” which includes things such as Facebook Messaging, according to Rinne. She also notes that all of the network “programming hooks” the carrier has made available to those looking to create services that rival its own.
While it will remain to be seen if AT&T’s network will dramatically improve because of these changes, it’s nice to see the carrier working on improving the end-user experience instead of just touting its fast LTE services.
What do you think AT&T and other U.S. carriers need to do in order to improve their networks? Let us know down in the comments!