VoLTE

The scheduled sunsetting of 2 and 3G is supercharging the shift towards VoLTE Roaming. No longer just an optional extra, it’s now business-critical for many MNOs. While the roll-out has been cautious since the August 2012 launch of the world’s first commercial VoLTE service in Texas by Metro PCS, there has been a noticeable gear shift over the past couple of years.

VoLTE-enabled devices are now part of our daily environment. So, why isn’t VoLTE roaming also ubiquitous?

In the US, AT&T stopped servicing its 2G network over four years ago and in Canada, Bell did the same a year later. Though European carriers are not quite so aggressive about all this—Vodafone has committed to not shutting its GSM network down until 2025, for example, and BT says it will end 3G in 2022 but keep 2G until the late 2020s.