Airtel Launching VoLTE Services Next Week; Watch Out Jio!

The battle between India’s largest telecom provider: Airtel, and India’s fastest growing telecom provider: Jio is all set to warm up, even further.

Right on the onset of festive season, Airtel has given hints that they may launch their much awaited VoLTE services as early as next week!

Such a quick launch clearly proves that Airtel doesn’t want Jio to get prepared for the assault, and want a quick fire launch to boost their market penetration.

Now, the question is, is it a bad news for Jio, as Airtel providing VoLTE services will snatch their USP, and open up the market, with equal playing field?

And, will Airtel, which has been matching every offer by Jio with their own offers, offer something more with their VoLTE services?

Hints Of Airtel VoLTE Services

As per a report published by ET, it has been revealed that they will start offering their VoLTE services from next week, and will gradually roll out the services pan-India, before the end of this financial year.

Some unnamed sources have informed that the VoLTE services from Airtel will kickstart from Mumbai, and then Kolkata and other metros including Delhi would be covered.

Post-Diwali, VoLTE services from Airtel will cover Tier-2/Tier3 cities, thereby covering whole of India by April 1st, 2018.

As per the unnamed source, users from Mumbai and Kolkata, along with ‘other metro cities’ will soon get a message to activate VoLTE services on their phones.

Another unnamed source said, “They (Airtel) will expand to more cities and cover the entire country well before this financial year end (on March 31),”

Airtel’s VoLTE Services Will Change Everything

First and foremost, once Airtel’s VoLTE hits the market, Jio will immediately lose that unique advantage they had till now: they were the only telco to provide VoLTE, and marketed the free calls heavily.

Technically speaking, both data and voice is offered using the same network on VoLTE, thereby making the calls using Internet, rather than a dedicated circuit-switch technology which is currently the norm.

Once Airtel and other telcos start offering VoLTE services, they can free up the 2G/3G network, and start offering 4G using the free network.

The quality of voice calls will also improve under VoLTE, and this can be the unique selling point for Airtel.

That unnamed source said, “This means if both voice and data can be offered on VoLTE, the 3G or the 2G network as the case may be is freed up and can be re-farmed for offering 4G data services,”

During April-June quarter, one out of three smartphones sold in India was a VoLTE enabled handset, and this means that the foundation is right there for the next VoLTE revolution in India.

Can Jio Phone make the difference here?

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