By 2020, 40% of voice calls will be on VoLTE, says Aircel CTO

New Delhi: About 40% of the total voice calls will be riding on Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology by 2020, though traditional voice service through circuit switched technology will remain relevant and dominate the local market, Aircel chief technology officer Sameer Dave said. He said in the next three to four years there will be a large number of VoLTE handsets, along with large 4G sites, that will make VoLTE more popular.

“The trend is starting… now customers are getting a bundled package where voice will be free. As voice will be free, all the VoLTE handsets will start consuming more data, whether you’re using a voice call or a data call,” Dave said.

And as VoLTE handsets and data become cheaper, the consumption of video will go up, he said.

Telecom operators in India have started integrating VoLTE technology with their systems but it is yet to become the mainstay. While Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Jio Infocomm, the new entrant in the country’s telecom business, has built a pan-India VoLTE network and is depending on this technology to deliver voice services, Bharti Airtel, the country’s leading telecom operator, is planning to move to the technology in key markets in the next 12-18 months.

Airtel currently offers calling on the legacy circuitswitch technology.

Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, the country’s second and third largest telecom carriers that are currently involved in merger talks, could also join the VoLTE race soon, having bolstered their 4G spectrum holdings in the recently concluded auctions.

Vodafone is already trialling VoLTE. In VoLTE voice, the speech is broken into and carried as small packets using a technology known as IMS, while circuit switched voice calling requires a dedicated circuit to be set up and reserved for the duration of a voice call.

Dave said that India will quickly embrace the 5G technology, but telecom operators here first need to optimally use both 4G and 3G networks. “5G is coming in and the tests are going on globally… In India, there’s a lot of relevance. The amount of spectrum and spectrum efficiency will give us higher speeds, which will be very exciting in the near future largely for the consumers,” Dave said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.