Vodafone India today announced the launch of its Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) services on 4G network across Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Gujarat (Surat and Ahmedabad) locations. The telco also stated that VoLTE services would be soon launched in Karnataka and Kolkata. At the same time, Vodafone said that the service would be extended across the country in a phased manner over the next few months. Vodafone subscribers with a 4G SIM card and VoLTE supported smartphone in the said regions can enjoy HD voice calls from today.
Even though Vodafone officially announced VoLTE service today, we earlier reported that several users in some parts of Mumbai and Delhi already started receiving VoLTE. To be noted, the Vodafone VoLTE service works similar to the Airtel VoLTE. If your phone latches onto 3G or 2G network, then you can enjoy standard voice, unlike Reliance Jio whose voice calls are restricted to only VoLTE.
Vodafone highlighted that even a user on VoLTE call and suddenly the network drops to 3G or 2G, the call won't be disconnected. Vodafone is calling its VoLTE service as 'Super VoLTE,' and only a few smartphones currently has support for Vodafone Super VoLTE.
Here are the Vodafone VoLTE supported smartphones:
- OnePlus: OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3
- Huawei: Honor View 10, Honor 9i, Honor 7X and Honor 8 Pro (Honor 6X also received the update, but Vodafone did not mention on official site)
- Xiaomi: Redmi 4, Mi Mix 2, and Mi Max 2
- Nokia: Nokia 5 and Nokia 8
- Samsung: Galaxy C9 Pro and J7 Nxt
The list is very small and major smartphones such as the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, Apple iPhone X, etc. are missing. Earlier, we reported that Apple is working to include the software patch on its smartphones and the rollout will happen by the end of March. Software manufacturers need to separately enable the Vodafone VoLTE support on their smartphones. Vodafone is also said to be extensively testing VoLTE on several smartphones.
So finally, Vodafone has rolled out VoLTE services in the country joining the list with Airtel and Reliance Jio. While Jio has a pan-India VoLTE coverage, that's not the case with Airtel and Vodafone. Airtel has VoLTE coverage in more than seven circles, and Vodafone is expected to expand the coverage to 13 circles very soon.
