On September 10, T-Mobile officially announced that Wi-Fi Calling is their next big push for subscribers, with a focused attempt at making calls transition flawlessly between the cellular network and a Wi-Fi connection. As is par for the course, other carriers are now voicing their own plans.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, AT&T was the first to outline in a very brief statement how the future of Wi-Fi Calling looks on the Big Blue network. While no exact dates were provided, anyone looking forward of taking advantage of the (not really new) technology can expect to do so sometime in 2015. What that means for a national launch, though, is still anyone’s guess.
On Wednesday, September 17, as revealed through a report published by Fierce Wireless, Verizon Wireless also has plans on supporting Wi-Fi Calling in the future, but it’s certainly not something they’re putting a huge effort into. As confirmed by the wireless carrier’s CFO, Fran Shammo, Verizon plans on doing some “technological work in our network to make it available.” As a result, it will rollout sometime by mid-2015, but nothing seems to be set in stone.
Shammo added that Wi-Fi Calling was never a “top priority” for Big Red:
“We built our voice platform so extensively [that] there was never a need for us to tell our customers, ‘Oh, our network is not good enough so you need to go on Wi-Fi to complete your call.’“
The CFO would go on to point out that Verizon has built its reputation on the quality of the call made, and the strength of the network that any particular device might be connecting it to. With the inclusion of Wi-Fi Calling, that guarantee can’t feasibly be made by the network. This is also directly related to the slow rollout of Voice-over LTE (VoLTE), as Verizon has continued to put in work to make sure that it is up to their own standards of quality and service before they extend it across the United States for subscribers to utilize.
Verizon’s approach to Wi-Fi Calling, and even AT&T’s, is a far cry from T-Mobile’s focused efforts. It still remains to be seen whether or not this is the next step for the mobile market. Indeed, it’s a good indication that it has some bearing, as Apple recently unveiled the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, both of which support Wi-Fi Calling, more advanced LTE and VoLTE, right out of the box.
[via Fierce Wireless]
No comments:
Post a Comment