No current plans for VoLTE

  Idea Cellular, the country's third largest telco by subscribers, said it has the capability to introduce Voice of LTE (VoLTE) technology, but it would do so only when the ecosystem is ready and matured in India. Idea's views echo those of market leader Bharti Airtel, but are in complete contrast to Reliance Jio Infocomm, which is planning mainly a VoLTE-based rollout and is banking on the software patches to make VoLTE enabled as many handsets as possible. VoLTE stands for voice calls provisioned over a 4G LTE data network, instead of the circuit switched 2G or 3G networks that are commonly used. VoLTE allows voice to become just another app that rides on a LTE data network. "The deployment of VoLTE will be evaluated at a later stage," the company said in a statement. Currently, 6 million 4G devices are registered on Idea's pan-India network and are growing at an exponential rate. Idea said its existing customers' current 4G smartphones do not support the VoLTE feature. The Aditya Birla group company, which launched 4G services in four telecom circles, is deploying 'Single RAN' equipment that supports multiple technologies in a given frequency band. For every 4G site on 1800MHz, this equipment also provides additional 2G voice capacity on GSM spectrum, it said.