BARCELONA—Verizon's new voice calling service will sound better than ordinary cell-phone calls, Verizon Wireless vice president of product development Marjorie Hsu said today.
In a noisy convention center at Mobile World Congress, I couldn't quite verify her assertion. But at least I could verify that voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) works, and that it integrates voice and video calling over an Internet-like network in a way that's just as smooth as the Verizon Wireless voice calls we're used to.
For years, Verizon has relied on its CDMA network to make voice calls. The carrier's new LTE-powered, 4G smartphones will still make calls on the old network. VoLTE, which has been successfully tested, is coming in 2012, Hsu said. That routes calls over the LTE network in a voice-over-IP-like manner. But this isn't the stuttering, choppy voice-over-IP you're used to on cell phones. VoLTE will be baked into the Verizon Wireless network with assurances of high-quality service and priority over any non-voice traffic.
To sweeten the deal, Verizon will turn up its voice quality with the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband codec, a way of encoding voice that takes up more room, and provides better sound, than Verizon's current codec. AMR-WB is currently known as "HD Voice" by some mobile-phone companies outside the U.S.
"It's a high-definition, very rich sounding conversation," Hsu said.
In the crowded convention hall, all I could hear was that I was making a call. But a call was made, and it was simple: dial a number and someone picks up. The sound was punchy, loud and clear. The LG Revolution phone I tried also had an option for video calls. Although the video calling ability wasn't quite as smooth as Apple's FaceTime, it was much, much clearer than any Android video calling software I've seen.
"Video has been one of those unrealized things for a very long time," Hsu said. "But if we craft a very graceful user experience, we can do video communication as well as video sharing."
Initially, consumers will be able to choose whether to make a standard 3G phone call or a 4G VoLTE call, because the 4G calls can't hand off to the 3G network. By the end of 2013, Verizon will have covered its entire 3G footprint with 4G and will release its first LTE-only smartphones with solely VoLTE calling, she said.
"If [phone users] want to stay on 1X and never drop a call, they'll have that option. If they want the rich calling features they can choose VoLTE," Hsu said.
Although the demo here at MWC is running on an existing LG Revolution phone, Hsu couldn't guarantee that the first round of 4G phones would use the new system. Verizon seems to still be working out whether VoLTE could be applied as a software upgrade.