Late last month Verizon finally announced that it would soon be launching its VoLTE service. The Voice-over-LTE service is joined by Verizon’s video calling service as well and both make up what Big Red is collectively calling the Advanced Calling 1.0 release. The announcement was made last month but today Verizon is formally rolling out both services, but there are some caveats, the biggest being that only supported devices will be able to take advantage of video calling and VoLTE on Big Red.
Verizon subscribers are required to opt-in to the service which has been rolled out nationwide. The carrier took a different route as opposed to AT&T which launched its VoLTE service in a handful of markets only, whereas T-Mobile has went ahead with the nationwide launch as well.
This service will lean on Verizon’s LTE network for both voice calls and native video calls. Voice calls run on the 13kbps codec whereas T-Mobile’s run on the 24kbps, Verizon thinks it doesn’t need to use higher bandwidth to achieve the call quality that its satisfied with.
Native video calling service is integrated into the dialer of supported devices and users will be able to seamlessly start them during a VoLTE voice call. Users will also be able to switch seamlessly between the two. Initially both services are only compatible with the LG G2 and Samsung Galaxy S5 but Verizon says that additional devices will receive support soon.
Don’t expect to reap the benefits of VoLTE on every call you make though. Its not cross-carrier so you’ll only be able to notice the improvement when chatting with someone also on Verizon with a supported device.