Three VoLTEs to victory as it jumps into UK 4G voice offering Mobe network Three is the first to offer UK 4G voice services, with the service going live Tuesday, taking advantage of the 800MHz spectrum which Three bought in the 2013 auction. The “low” 800MHz frequency gives much better coverage than existing services through other frequencies. Three claims its customers "will be able to …
It is the paragraph spacing that makes it confusing.
Try this:
"The primary advantages of VoLTE are that it’s more spectrum efficient: mobe operators can carry more calls with less infrastructure, but it also offers quicker call set-up and much lower latency; This is dramatic if you make a 2G or 3G call to someone in the same room and then make a VoLTE one.
The call quality is a shade better but, given that it’s using the same codecs as 3G, the difference is marginal."
Why? As far as I know they don't customise the firmware? (Happy to be corrected on that...)
I did notice recently that Three have released a VOIP app which is supposed to give you call coverage in Wifi enabled spots which don't have phone coverage - so I'm wondering if they're bundling a helper app to achieve this?
All the uk networks customise firmware. And in the case of VoLTE there's no alternative: it has a bucketful of settings that have to be aligned throughout the system - including handset - or the service simply doesn't work. So it's custom builds only until the technology matures I'm afraid... Which leaves the nexus out in the cold as google doesn't allow customisation on that.
For a truly seamless experience, we need VoLTE AND VoWiFi, but what we currently have is two half-efforts (EE & Three), a clusterfuck (Vodafone), and a 'no comment' from O2:
EE: VoWiFi, but no clear commitment to VoLTE
Three: VoLTE, but no clear commitment to VoWiFi beyond "something we're looking into"
Vodafone: Supposedly launched VoWiFi this week, yet their telephone and Twitter support staff don't even seem to know what it is, let alone 'activate' it. VoLTE was supposed to launch at the same time, but apparently this hasn't happened, nor do any of their staff know anything about it - contrary to statements made by Vodafone in Q1.
O2: Seemingly aren't bothered about launching either (though as they're going through the process of being acquired by Three, this can be forgiven IMO).
Gotta love the UK mobile industry...
It's not the same. VoWiFi from EE doesn't require a separate app - it just works and you can use calls and texts as if you were connected to a mobile mast.
With the Three app, you have to have the app running and depending on what it decides to do your text messages will only appear in the app and not in your normal messaging app.
The upside of the Three version is that it's available on more phones than EE's way of doing it
“Not being able to use your phone as and when you want, no matter where you are, is one of the biggest pain points for customers,"
As a Three customer I would say that paying more and losing unlimited tethering in return for the 'free' upgrade to 4G has been the biggest pain point for me.
As a new Three customer, I discovered in Spain recently that tethering is disabled in all of the new 'as if you were home' roaming regions, even if you're paying for tethering.
NOT HAPPY to find that out. Particularly since our iPad is Wifi-only and there was no Wifi where we were staying.
This is mentioned somewhere in the fine print if you look very hard for it, but the Three salespeople will not tell you this.
Be careful with the grandfather plans. Both my wife and I were on 'The One' plans. I got booted off when I didn't continue paying extra for the phone. My wife was on a pay monthly sim-only One plan (paying ~£15pm IIRC) when she received a letter informing her the One plan was no more and she was automatically being moved onto an equivalent plan costing ~£35pm. We weren't happy with that, so now she's paying the same, but getting only 1GB of data per month, which we are obviously not happy about, either. We wanted to quit on principal, but the bastards arestill the best value for our needs.
I mean VoLTE is VoIP over LTE with _lots_ of complexity added to allow things like international roaming and handover to 3G and GSM networks. Given that today many companies (cough Cisco, cough Mitel, cough 3CX...) can't even properly implement the comparatively simple subset of SIP you need to make everyday phonecalls, I doubt that it'll work reliably any time soon. And even when it works it'll be a security nightmare, as all the miss features of classical SS7 networks have been re-implemented.
In the US, Verizon's gotten VoLTE recently; MetroPCS rolled it out first (after running CDMA 1x, rolling out EVDO in like 1 market then shutting it down, they went straight from CDMA 1X to LTE+VoLTE.) T-Mobile bought MetroPCS and AFAIK T-Mobile has VoLTE on their LTE coverage too.
The 800mhz LTE will definitely improve the reach of 1800mhz sites. I've used 700mhz LTE + 1900mhz everything else (CDMA, EVDO), rurally you get substantial extra range from the 700mhz, I got to areas out in the hills where I had a bar or two of LTE and no service for voice (my phone doesn't support VoLTE.) Urban setting, the 700mhz is typically "detuned" so you're not getting like 5 bars of 4G where you'd get a bar or two of 1900, they will be similar. If the 700 was blasting out and getting like double the range, it'd interfere with neighboring LTE sites. Other markets I've used 800mhz cellular + 700mhz LTE and the signal strength is similar.
In terms of VoLTE, I do have one useful bit of information. People in the states were quite concerned about VoLTE coverage. In some cities, you'd have this swiss cheese coverage of 4G with various pockets of 3G coverage. Also, some rural areas would show a fringe of 3G coverage. Losing 4G would drop a VoLTE call. Don't fret! The 4G to 3G handoff's a (cell site) tuneable parameter (if a low 4G and low 3G signal get the user similar speeds, why not kick them to 3G?) BUT, people with VoLTE-capable phones have found if they start a VoLTE call, the phone stays in 4G well past he point it'd normally lose it (and the superweak LTE has no problem carrying the 8kb/sec or whatever the call needs.) I recall one person (who got their phone into a diagnostic display) saying their phone would hold LTE in a VoLTE call about 20db lower signal strength than it would switch off otherwise.
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