T-Mobile Begins to Launch Voice Over LTE with HD Voice

After AT&T and Verizon both announced their plans to launch Voice Over LTE, T-Mobile has gone ahead and flipped the switch in their Seattle market.

While T-Mobile has had HD Voice for over a year now with their launch of the iPhone 5, it has achieved this by enabling the AMR-WB codec on their HSPA network. Today, the carrier officially launched Voice over LTE in its Seattle market. With calls now routing over the LTE network instead of the previous HSPA+ network, customers can enjoy LTE data speeds while on a call, faster call setup times, and crystal clear calls with less background noise.

So I’m thrilled to congratulate my team on the launch of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in the Seattle area for our existing LG G Flex and Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Light customers. Our friends at MetroPCS were the first to launch VoLTE in the U.S. back in 2012, and we’ve been working hard on a LTE Advanced version of VoLTE, which we plan to roll out to more T-Mobile customers throughout the coming year.

VoLTE is the next major advancement in LTE and essentially brings both data and voice onto the same radio layer, as it should be. Customer benefits include faster call setup times (almost twice as fast as a non-VoLTE call setup) and the ability to enjoy lightening fast LTE data speeds while on a call. HD Voice service is also included with VoLTE. We've been offering nationwide HD Voice since January 2013 - something our competitors couldn't do without VoLTE.


Currently the LG G Flex Galaxy Note 3, and Galaxy Light customers and Seattle are the only ones able to experience VoLTE. However T-Mobile will be rolling out this feature on a market-by-market basis. T-Mobile also detailed a new feature of its LTE advance network it is working on called eSRVCC.

Enhanced Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (eSRVCC) is a new LTE Advanced function and we’re excited to be the first to deploy it in the U.S. All of this basically helps ensure that your capable phone won’t drop a call if you leave an LTE area and it switches to 4G HSPA+ or 2G coverage.

Unfortunately the iPhone 5, 5s and 5c are not supported at this time. However, since the chipsets on these devices supports VoLTE, Apple could release a software update (iOS 8) that would bring VoLTE support. With all major US Carriers now supporting VoLTE, it is safe to assume Apple's next generation iPhone will support the feature right out of the box.

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