T-Mobile: soon your voice calls will go over 5G just like your data
Did you know that your voice calls still go over the older school 4G LTE network while your data is on the 5G one? Yes, just like in the last days of 3G the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) handoff was a rarity, now the so-called Voice over New Radio (VoNR) technology over 5G is just about to be implemented, even though we've had 5G data networks for a good while.
Well, in the case of America's largest 5G network the carryover has already began, as, speaking for FierceWireless, T-Mobile’s President of Technology Neville Ray confirmed that its 5G network will soon be able to handle both calls and data:
We’ve been driving very hard with the vendor community. We’re getting close, but we’re not ready. We don’t yet see the quality in software and vendor products.
It’s the same as what happened with LTE. With LTE we rolled out data first, then later VoLTE... To have a good, strong reliable voice service on 5G you need a big, strong 5G footprint.
It’s important to work out any kinks because once a call is set up on 5G it’s undesirable for it to get bumped down to LTE. Every time those changes happen you can have potential problems.
That's not to say that VoNA won't be happening soon, though, as Mr Ray confirmed it won't nearly be as the "tough sledding" as VoLTE used to be.
T-Mobile, it turns out, is doing an abundance of testing for voice calls over its 5G network, and the first phones to support VoNR are expected as soon as 2022, perhaps by the time the Galaxy S22 models hit the shelves this spring, as Samsung's phones have traditionally been at the forefront of these newfangled 5G technologies.
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