India's leading telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, recently confirmed that it will roll out pan-India VoLTE service by March 2018. It is also said that Airtel is conducting VoLTE test services in various cities of India. And now, an Airtel user from Mumbai named Akshay Redij has posted a screenshot on Twitter, which reveals that the network is connected to VoLTE.
As you can see in the screenshot, the VoLTE service seems to go live very soon in the Mumbai city, and the user was at Santacruz, Mumbai area. However, he even said that VoLTE was available for a few minutes, and disappeared. That said, Airtel may be testing the VoLTE service in that particular area. Also, there's no info on which cities Airtel is running the VoLTE testing.
The user was using a Xiaomi device as you can clearly see in the image, and it could be the Redmi Note 4. Xiaomi recently pushed a software update to the Note 4 which added support for Airtel VoLTE. Previously, we exclusively reported that Airtel is working with smartphone vendors to test out the VoLTE service.
So, we might soon make calls on Airtel with the help of VoLTE (Voice over LTE), meaning it uses mobile internet to make and receive voice calls.
As of now, Reliance Jio is the only operator offering VoLTE service in India. The LTE-only operator led by Mukesh Ambani has been offering VoLTE since its inception in September 2016.
With the VoLTE service under its belt, Airtel will boost the competition with Reliance Jio, and it may even allow the operator to lower the prices of its tariff plans. Besides Airtel VoLTE, the leading telecom operator also announced its Project Next, under which it's implementing next generation Airtel stores, postpaid promise scheme, and improved Airtel Secure program. The commercial launch of Airtel VoLTE service might happen after the festive season.
