In the last couple of years, we’ve become accustomed to 4G LTE from both AT&T and Verizon. Meanwhile, Sprint and T-Mobile have only just found their feet when it comes to LTE. Ma Bell isn’t standing still however and they’re already looking forward to the next big thing when it comes to LTE. For some time now, we’ve been hearing that the next big thing is going to be VoLTE, or Voice over LTE. This new tech is set to drastically improve the quality of our cell phone calls. AT&T thinks that they’ll be able to release their first VoLTE capable device before the end of the year, according to Krish Prabhu, President of AT&T Labs while speaking at the PCIA wireless infrastructure conference.
That’s all fine and well however, but when will VoLTE become available to most of us? When talking about AT&T, we’re looking at sometime towards the end of 2014, when the network feels like their nationwide LTE rollout will be complete. Once VoLTE launches commercially, we’ll be able to enjoy HD Voice Calls so long as both parties have a capable device. AT&T has been working on their LTE network throughout 2013 and the network feels that they’re ready to rollout LTE Advanced in the very near future. It’s said that this will be done via a set of software updates, so long as their hardware partners hold up their end of the bargain.
The speeds we’re able to reach on the go have skyrocketed since the arrival of LTE but, the humble voice call has stayed much the same. No matter how good noise cancellation in devices get, our voices still travel over older technology. With VoLTE, our phone conversations will enter the HD era and for those of us that still like to chat on our phones, it’ll be a welcome change. If AT&T is looking to launch a VoLTE capable device before 2013 comes to a close, it’ll be interesting to see who makes it for them. This editor is thinking that Pantech will be tapped by Ma Bell to create such a device but, what do you think? Let us know in the comments below!