South Korean mobile service provider LG U+ has tied up with Ericsson to launch voice over LTE services.
Voice over LTE technology enables the telecom operator to offer enhanced telecom grade services such as HD voice, video calling, chat and presence.
The demand for LTE data services in South Korea has increased significantly ever since LG U+ launched LTE commercially on July 1, 2011. As of August 2012, LG U+ is the second largest LTE provider in South Korea, serving 3.1 million of LTE subscribers.
Joo sik Choi, senior vice president of Service Creation, LG U+, said Ericsson's global leadership in LTE technology and experience in building an end-to-end LTE network infrastructure helped ensure the success of the nationwide launch of this service.
According to Dell'Oro Group, top three VoLTE (Voice over LTE) vendors in first quarter of 2012 are Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.
Johan Wibergh, head of Business Unit Networks at Ericsson, said the new VoLTE technology enabled LG U+ to offer its subscribers better voice quality and an improved user experience. The new VoLTE services will sharpen LG U+'s competitive edge considerably and will provide the foundation for further enriching their communication services offering.
Earlier, several telecom industry analysts predicted that Verizon, Metro PCS, SK Telecom and LG U+ may launch VoLTE services this year.
Ericsson has supplied an end-to-end VoLTE network to LG U+, including LTE-RAN, Evolved Packet Core, and IMS Telephony Application Server.
South Korea and Hong Kong have already successfully launched LTE data roaming and by August, SK Telecom expects to have the Samsung Galaxy S3, the first handset to support VoLTE on their network.