Verizon, AT&T Cooperate on VoLTE

You might remember a couple of months ago, we talked about AT&T doing research on cross-carrier VoLTE calls and speculated that there would be more than a few issues to work out before it would work. However, it appears that AT&T and Verizon are determined to tackle the problem together, and have joined in a brief partnership to make cross-carrier VoLTE a reality. T-Mobile, the other carrier to support VoLTE, doesn’t seem to be included at the moment although both Verizon and AT&T stated that they would be willing to work with other carriers in the future. Currently, to use VoLTE, both parties must be on phones with VoLTE abilities, they have to be in an area that is covered by VoLTE and they can only call others using the same carrier. Verizon currently has about six phones capable of making VoLTE calls, while AT&T has even fewer. According to an article by FierceWireless, AT&T and Verizon have been working through requirements to make VoLTE work between carriers and they expect interoperability sometime n 2015. An exact date was not listed, but lab testing and field trials will have to be completed before launch. Since both companies use different networks which handle VoLTE differently, it will be interesting to see how well it works across carriers. I’ll update whenever I hear more information!]]>