Vodafone VoLTE goes live in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Gujarat

Vodafone said that it has rolled out of its Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services across Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Gujarat (Surat and Ahmedabad). The telco said that its VoLTE service will next be launched in Karnataka and Kolkata and extended across the country in a phased manner over the next few months.

Sunil Sood, Managing Director, and Chief Executive Officer, Vodafone India, said, “Vodafone VoLTE will empower our customers to enjoy seamless connectivity of a higher level, enabling them to explore newer possibilities with their smart devices. We have consistently invested in building, a robust and future fit data strong network, pan India. We will be expanding the Vodafone VoLTE experience in several more circles shortly.”

Vodafone said that its customers can access Vodafone VoLTE services on all VoLTE enabled devices. Several popular handsets are already compatible with the Vodafone VoLTE network, and the numbers of such handsets is growing rapidly.

Vodafone said that its 4G customers can access VoLTE service for no additional charges and all calls will be billed as per existing plan or pack benefits.

Reliance Jio is still the only telco in the country that offers pan-India VoLTE service and had been touting that service as a key differentiator with its rivals.

Bharti Airtel, however, in September this year became the first of the older telecom carriers to adopt the technology to launch the service in Mumbai. Besides Mumbai, Airtel offers VoLTE service in Maharashtra, Goa, Chennai, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, and it plans to extend the service across the country.

Vodafone is in the process of merging its operations with India’s third largest telco, Idea Cellular, which is also preparing to introduce VoLTE service on its 4G LTE network by early 2018 following successfully conducted trials in some of its key circles.

Through own VoLTE services, these telcos would try and ring-fence their subscriber base ahead of the completion of their merger, and amid a fierce price war for the market share, analysts said. Both these telcos currently offer voice services on the legacy circuit-switch technology, with data being offered on a 4G network and voice on a 3G or 2G network.

The introduction of VoLTE will allow Vodafone to free up its 3G and 2G network that are currently being used to offer voice service. Analysts say these networks can be refarmed for offering 4G data services, and would give the telco more airwaves to meet surging demand for mobile broadband.

Vodafone said it has built a robust and resilient data strong network of 140,000 sites that enable better call quality and mobile internet experience to its customers. “This will be a key differentiator for Vodafone in providing seamless connectivity and experience to its customers,” it added.

VoLTE technology allows an operator to offer both voice and data on the same network with voice being just another application that rides on an LTE data network, which thus means more efficient use of airwaves.

Analysts say VoLTE as a technology and service is extremely important for telcos, and they need to aggressively look at investing in it to counter the VoIP and OTT threat. VoLTE is going to be a core of these telcos’ respective networks, and can easily be managed with the existing service engines.

All the advantages that VoLTE offers are extremely critical for telcos. It is a better voice engine as compared to circuit switch. The technology also offers various advantages such as better smartphone battery life, less call set up time, and better voice quality.