Next gen LTE chips will use 50% less power and push VoLTE
The dream of quite a few telco nerds is to finally get rid of the per minute mobile plans, or the per text plans, and just have a pipe of data streaming to your hand. One big piece to that puzzle is voice-over-IP (VoIP) or voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) as it has become known since everyone wants to brand everything with LTE these days. Anyway, the next generation of LTE chips from ST-Ericsson could help push this agenda because they are expected to support VoLTE and use 50% less power than current chips.
LTE chips have gotten quite a bit more power efficient since they first came out, but attempting VoLTE would still drain your battery pretty quickly, which would make the dream Google Wireless carrier be a bust from the start. But, make the next generation 50% more efficient and that opens up some possibilities, especially given that MetroPCS already has VoLTE live in select markets, and Verizon is planning to begin rolling out VoLTE this year in order to have it widely available by 2014.
source: ST-Ericsson via BGR
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