We’ve finally reached a point where it looks like all four major US carriers have decided to push LTE to their entire network over the next few years. Now that the data part has been sorted out, the next step is Voice over LTE. Verizon’s aggressive push to LTE for data seems to be matched only by their new desire to ditch CDMA, but it’s going to take them a little while to get there.
There are a lot of significant benefits to VoLTE on any carrier, but especially for Verizon. This is a promise Verizon has been making for a couple of years now, and users are eager to make the switch. By removing the CDMA radio entirely, you not only save on battery life but you remove the complicated handoff method currently being deployed on Verizon. Verizon phones work really hard to gracefully slide from LTE to CDMA and back to LTE for streaming data, and the benefit in battery life alone when that is gone could be significant for some users.
In their rush to get LTE out to the US before anyone else, Verizon put themselves in a difficult situation when it comes to an upgrade path for their LTE network. Switching to an all LTE environment will mean upgrading each and every one of their LTE towers, which will more than likely result in a staged rollout where only parts of the LTE network are VoLTE ready for a significant period of time.
When Verizon was first rolling out their LTE network, it wasn’t even referred to as a 4G network by the ITU. The definition of 4G was altered to support the networks created by US carriers, who had already begun branding their networks. Unlike Sprint, whose towers were built to switch elegantly (just insert a new network card) between the existing LTE r9 and the not yet deployed LTE r10 (also called LTE Advanced), the Verizon towers are exclusively LTE r9. While VoLTE is supported in LTE r9, there’s a performance hit in both voice quality and data throughput when compared to LTE r10.
There are a lot of significant benefits to VoLTE on any carrier, but especially for Verizon. This is a promise Verizon has been making for a couple of years now, and users are eager to make the switch. By removing the CDMA radio entirely, you not only save on battery life but you remove the complicated handoff method currently being deployed on Verizon. Verizon phones work really hard to gracefully slide from LTE to CDMA and back to LTE for streaming data, and the benefit in battery life alone when that is gone could be significant for some users.
In their rush to get LTE out to the US before anyone else, Verizon put themselves in a difficult situation when it comes to an upgrade path for their LTE network. Switching to an all LTE environment will mean upgrading each and every one of their LTE towers, which will more than likely result in a staged rollout where only parts of the LTE network are VoLTE ready for a significant period of time.
When Verizon was first rolling out their LTE network, it wasn’t even referred to as a 4G network by the ITU. The definition of 4G was altered to support the networks created by US carriers, who had already begun branding their networks. Unlike Sprint, whose towers were built to switch elegantly (just insert a new network card) between the existing LTE r9 and the not yet deployed LTE r10 (also called LTE Advanced), the Verizon towers are exclusively LTE r9. While VoLTE is supported in LTE r9, there’s a performance hit in both voice quality and data throughput when compared to LTE r10.
Details surrounding the actual LTE rollout are sparse still, but based on what we know about Verizon’s network right now it is unlikely that the transition will be a simple, network-wide switch to this new platform. When considering Verizon’s current resources, and understanding that each and every LTE tower would need to be updated physically and individually, bringing their entire LTE network up to VoLTE before 2015 is likely cost prohibitive.
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