News: Verizon to get VoLTE this summer

The battle of CDMA and GSM technologies for mobile has been there for a while and one of the major differences in their approach was highlighted recently when Verizon released iPhone in its network. The initial commercials on iPhone (for AT&T)  highlighted the capability of the phone able to do voice call and then browse at the same time to get some information. This simultaneous activity is not technically feasible in traditional CDMA networks that are available today and that is going to change this summer.



Verizon has adopted the Long Term Evolution (LTE) approach to upgrade from its current 3G network. Currently most CDMA opeators use the LTE network to transmit data and use the CDMA network to transmit the voice calls. In the case of LTE everything is considered data and even the voice calls can be considered to be data and transmitted over the LTE network, this could be compared to how we do voice chat over the internet.

Verizon had announced LG Revolution in CES 2011 and this phone is likely to be the first one that is going to Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) when it launches this summer. The LTE coverage does not cover all of US yet and is still evolving and till then if the user moves from LTE based area to CDMA, then the voice will automatically switch from VoLTE to CDMA.

The voice calls over LTE network will mean that the call quality can be significantly improved and they claim that it will be like High Definition Audio. It is definitely good to see that the Call Quality is making a come back in the feature set of a phone after quite sometime. To see the true potential of this ability, both phones involved in the call may need to use VoLTE and based on the LTE coverage of Verizon, it may be a slow transition but definitely a step in the right direction.

This could also be the start of a new "Revolution" for Verizon, with the launch of LG Revolution

Author: Vinod
Source: Engadget, Gizmodo