In a Tuesday media conference, Verizon’s Nicola Palmer confirmed that the carrier is indeed working on Voice-over-LTE capability, and the company plans to roll out the feature late next year. Verizon is reportedly continuing to test the service, which has been in the works for some time now. Estimates made earlier in this year pegged Verizon’s VoLTE service as arriving in early 2013, though Palmer’s latest statements disprove those predictions.
As its name implies, VoLTE is the use of an LTE data connection to transmit voice calls. Verizon has been working on the technology at least since 2010, and the carrier has previously estimated that it would be releasing such a feature as early as 2012. Now, though, Palmer states that the feature is “in testing” and that Verizon has deployed all of the infrastructure that will be necessary for it.
Much of the rest of the call was dedicated to touting Verizon’s accomplishments in the LTE 4G space. The carrier’s 4G network will cover the entirety of its current 3G footprint by the end of 2013.
