T-Mobile launches VoLTE in its own backyard w/ support for LG G Flex, Galaxy Note 3, & Galaxy Light
Following announcements earlier this month from both AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile announced today it's introducing Voice over LTE support starting with Seattle.
Context & Ripple Effects
The third national carrier has now followed the other two into VoLTE within the same week: AT&T announced its own rollout just seven days earlier, ahead of an expected iPhone/iOS integration this fall (AT&T's VoLTE announcement), while Verizon spent the prior weekend rebranding capacity upgrades under its new XLTE label. T-Mobile's move also closes a loop inside its own house — MetroPCS, which it absorbed, was actually the first US operator to light up Voice over LTE back in August 2012 (MetroPCS's 2012 VoLTE launch), so the un-carrier is catching up to its own subsidiary's technology.
The pickup here is unusually broad for a regional network launch — Thomson One, Digital Trends, the Los Angeles Times, PC Magazine, PC World, GeekWire, The Verge and Electronista all carried the Seattle story on day one — a sign the trade press reads this as the moment VoLTE goes from pilot project to three-carrier standard rather than as a one-city footnote.
First-order effects
- Subscribers in Seattle holding an LG G Flex, Galaxy Note 3 or Galaxy Light gain simultaneous HD voice calling and full LTE data speeds, ending the fallback to older voice networks mid-call.
- T-Mobile achieves feature parity with AT&T's rollout announced on May 15 and blunts Verizon's XLTE capacity narrative, at least in one market and only on three certified devices.
Second-order effects
- Device makers now face certification requests from all four major carriers (counting MetroPCS's early start), pushing VoLTE support from optional firmware to a baseline requirement for flagship handsets like Samsung's and LG's current lineups.
- With voice moving onto LTE data budgets, carriers' marketing shifts from coverage maps to call quality and spectral efficiency — the same battleground Verizon chose with its XLTE branding days ago.
Third-order effects
- If all three national carriers keep expanding VoLTE city by city through 2014–2015, legacy circuit-switched voice becomes a sunset technology, freeing spectrum currently reserved for 2G/3G calling and completing the industry's shift to all-IP networks.
- A single IP-based voice standard across carriers sets up the conditions for interoperable rich-call features (HD voice between carriers, video calling) that fragmented legacy networks could never deliver.
The trend: US mobile carriers are converging on all-IP LTE networks in which voice is just another data service, with 2014 as the year all three nationals committed.