Sprint wants it VoLTE network to be interoperable with domestic and international LTE carriers
Here is some refreshing news for Sprint customers: Although Sprint hasn’t talked much about its future plans for Voice over LTE (VoLTE), it does want to ensure that any future developments in this area will remain open. It is doing this to allow network interoperability with both domestic and international VoLTE carriers, so that Sprint customers will have more options for roaming, and so that Sprint can gain additional revenue by allowing others to roam on its network.
Traditionally, Sprint has not always chosen the most widely used network technology – for example, it chose CDMA over GSM, and in order to be first to market with 4G, it initially chose WiMAX instead of LTE.
Sprint is currently only in the programming phase of its VoLTE roll out. This means that the carrier is basically still designing the technology and gathering feedback from device and network OEMs about feasibility and hardware support. Sprint hope to be done with this later this summer, so that it can move on to the field test phase.
Interestingly, some of Sprint’s key roaming partners will participate in the field tests to ensure interoperability.
There is still no schedule as to when customers will actually be able to use VoLTE on Sprint’s network, although many are hopefully that a widespread rollout will begin in 2015. AT&T, Verizon, and even T-Mobile have all started implementing VoLTE themselves, so Sprint will certainly have some catching up to do. However, it does stand to have a competitive edge over the competition by waiting a bit longer to ensure that its network will be compatible with others.
[S4GRU]
