How Telkom is making your phone calls clearer
Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is the future of voice calling – and Telkom is leading the charge with widespread implementation of the technology in South Africa.
This is a crucial venture as South Africa’s largest network providers are slowly decommissioning their 2G and 3G networks to embrace the technologies of the present and future.
VoLTE is vastly superior to VoIP, 2G and 3G Voice, as VoLTE supports high-definition audio quality.
By switching over to VoLTE, network providers are now offering much higher quality, capacity and spectrum efficiency than they did with legacy voice technologies, and this is resulting in consumer benefits like:
- VoLTE supports HD+ quality for much clearer call quality.
- VoLTE’s increased capacity allows consumers to perform other data-driven tasks – like watching videos and browsing – simultaneously with the VoLTE calls.
- Call set-up time has been decreased significantly
As South Africa continues to embrace 4G and 5G technology while legacy 2G and 3G networks are being decommissioned, VoLTE will form the foundation for voice communications for many years to come.
State of VoLTE in South Africa
VoLTE has already become the dominant voice technology across South Africa
For example, approximately 80% of Telkom’s customer base now has an LTE terminal, while 77% own VoLTE terminals.
In fact, more than 35% of all Telkom Voice traffic comprises of VoLTE calling.
VoLTE with Telkom
Telkom is now one of the top VoLTE operators and boasts the highest VoLTE user ratio, traffic ratio, and penetration rate – not only in South Africa, but the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa.
It is also focused on innovation, and has implemented smart provisioning of VoLTE services based on the phone terminal used by the consumers.
This results in better call quality for South Africans using 4G and 5G phones.
Telkom expects 2 million more users to move onto VoLTE within the next six months which would be incredibly impressive and indicative of the importance of this technology to South Africa’s digital transformation.
Telkom has embraced many other developments to improve its VoLTE service including implementing a holistic KPI system and optimisation plan to improve the VoLTE user experience and refarming its 3G spectrum to enhance its LTE network.
The reason why Telkom is confident that it can scale its VoLTE capabilities so aggressively is because of its partnership with Huawei, which provides end-to-end infrastructure from Core Network to Radio Network with digitalized platforms Like CEM (Customer Experience Management) to improve its operations and enhance user experience
Huawei is leading in mobile network technologies and has partnered with Telkom throughout its connectivity journey – including 3G, LTE, and 5G.
It is the vendor that has provided Telkom with the appropriate infrastructure to become a dominant VoLTE player in South Africa, and has also helped the network provider implement the technology.
As Telkom and Huawei jointly lead the development of VoLTE in sub-Saharan Africa, the future looks bright.
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