Verizon has been shy about its plans for rolling out voice calling services on its LTE network, primarily because the service isn’t a core of LTE, rather everything is simply treated as data. This means carriers must think over their options and decide how to add voice into their plans. We formulated a vague impression from Verizon’s LTE launch event late last year that 4G voice wasn’t in the company’s 2011 plans, but it turns out that’s not true: they’ve now come out to say that the LG Revolution will be the first VoLTE device from Verizon to launch this mid-year.
This move will reflect the carrier’s first baby step into the 4G voice realm; it’ll offer higher sound quality as compared to traditional cellular and landline calls, which will be its unique selling point. What we understand from the scenario, is that it’ll take several years for the handsets to support the standard on a wide scale and LTE footprints to expand nationally, but it’s a big move nonetheless.
Read more news on this at MWC next week.
