Optus fires up VoLTE across the major cities

Optus customers in Australia’s major cities will enjoy new Voice over LTE calls and services from today as the telco pushes the new network feature to its subscribers.

Postpaid customers with a Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge handsets in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra will have the feature first, with other locations and handsets to follow.

Voice over LTE is a network enhancement that places calls from smartphones on a 4G connections. Despite most new phones being 4G capable, all phones currently switch to 3G coverage to place a call.

VoLTE offers two major advantages. Placing a call on 4G means you can multitask with other apps on your phone and continue to use the 4G network, allowing to do things faster.

it should also help to manage network congestion as it shifts some users to a 4G connection while leaving others on the 3G radio bands.

“We’ve all been on a call when we’ve needed to quickly look up the address of a restaurant or download a file from an email.  With VoLTE, this will all be a lot faster and easier because you’ll stay on a 4G connection,” said Optus Managing Director Networks Dennis Wong.

Optus is actually a little late to the party, with both Telstra and Vodafone launching similar VoLTE services at the end of last year.

Joseph Hanlon

Editorial Director | X | LinkedIn

Joe Hanlon has been immersed in mobile phones, plans and the internet for over a decade, having written for publications like CNET, Techradar, Gizmodo and Lifehacker. He steers the editorial ship and makes sure that we are always serving up the most useful guides and recommendations. If you ever bump into Joe on the street, don't be afraid to ask for a phone recommendation. It's embarrassing how much he enjoys talking about this stuff. He also loves listening to podcasts, so feel free to email Joe with recommendations.

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