Dubai: Residents in the UAE will be able to get high-definition voice calls on their mobile phones and voice over WiFi from du this year.
Saleem Al Beloushi, executive vice-president of network development and operation at du, told Gulf News, on the sidelines of the LTE Mena 2015 conference, that telecoms in the country will start ultilizing LTE technology, a digital standard, to transmit voice calls over the existing cellular networks.
“The voice over LTE [VoLTE] has better efficiency, HD clarity, faster connection time and overall cost per byte will be cheaper for consumers than on 3G network,” he said.
Today, there is a seamless transition when users switch from cellular networks (such as 2G and 3G) without them knowing it. This will now be the case with WiFi, with voice over WiFi [VoWiFi] allowing users to move between their home WiFi networks and their cellular network without disturbing the voice session.
“In WiFi, the cost per byte is cheaper and will further increase the infrastructure efficiency and offer a low-cost international roaming solution as users can make and receive mobile calls as if they were on their home network when connected to any WiFi network,” Al Beloushi said.
The move to VoLTE is one service that every major telecom carrier is working towards.
“VoLTE has already been launched in few markets around the world. I don’t think they have decided on the pricing yet, they are going to make experiments to start with,” said Matthew Reed, practice leader for Ovum’s Middle East and Africa.
LTE was originally seen as an IP cellular system by telecom operators just for carrying data and voice either by reverting to cellular networks.
The voice over LTE scheme was devised as a result of operators seeking a standardised system for transferring voice over LTE network.
Today many operators globally transmit voice calls over the traditional circuit-switched networks, and subscribers use the newer IP-based 4G LTE network to access the internet and other data services, including video calling.
“Treating voice like a data service on the 4G data network makes wireless providers’ networks operationally more efficient and free the spectrum to deploy more high-speed data services,” Reed said.
He said the intake of LTE in the Gulf region is strong due to affordable LTE devices available in the market.
