China Mobile to launch VoLTE by 2014
China Mobile plans to start commercial usage of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services by the fourth quarter of 2014.
Li Yue, CEO of the world's largest telco by subscriber base, said on Wednesday, China Mobile will start comprehensive testing of VoLTE services in the third quarter, followed by a small-scale field trial in the fourth quarter of this year, China Daily reported.
Li had been speaking at Shanghai's Mobile Asia Expo, where the company released a VoLTE White paper.
The CEO said VoLTE has many advantages over traditional voice-call technologies and also supports high definition voice and video service. VoLTE is an approach of delivering voice services as data flows within LTE, or 4G networks.
Other telcos worldwide have turned their attention to VoLTE technology with the proliferation of LTE 4G network deployments. For example, U.S.-based Verizon Wireless confirmed it will deploy VoLTE services later this year or in early 2014.
In Singapore, StarHub launched high definition (HD) Voice in March this year, aimed at delivering local calls with higher quality sound in a bid to enhance customers' mobile call experience.