Sam Oliver
While T-Mobile will be the only U.S. carrier to support Wi-Fi calling on Apple's new iPhone 6 series handsets at launch, it will not remain alone for long as market leader AT&T announced that it will roll out the technology on its own network next year.
"We don't have a burning desire or need for coverage," AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega said Friday when asked why the carrier was lagging behind competitors, according to CNET. "Other operators with less coverage may pursue it more aggressively."
De la Vega cited concerns about the reliability of call handoff between Wi-Fi and GSM networks. It is more seamless when handing off to LTE, but AT&T's Voice over LTE rollout has not yet been completed.
At a Wednesday press conference, T-Mobile CEO John Legere — in his now-trademark style — offered only a single reason for his company's support. "Why not do it?" he said.
Apple added support for Wi-Fi calling, which reroutes voice calls over Wi-Fi data networks, in iOS 8. T-Mobile announced support for the feature in June of this year.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
58 Comments
“Next year”, meaning December 31, 2015.
Call me a skeptic, but doesn't this make the premium carriers no different than Republic Wireless? If calls are going to be offloaded to wifi or (eventually) automatically on an AT&T wifi location, how secure is the phone call from being intercepted over a public wifi network? There will need to be some sort of encryption of the call audio, with traffic priority on the network to ensure call quality. (prioritized traffic/QoS.. sound the NN crowd to complain that tier 1 voice carriers get priority over NetFlix) Then take into the equation that AT&T's wifi typically only has 500K upload max, and less than 1mb downlink, and high latency for carrier provided hotspots, mostly at McDonalds.
Cool. Can't wait to get rid of the crappy M-Cell box AT&T made me buy that never worked.
"We don't have a burning desire or need for coverage," AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega said. WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING?
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/182261/at-t-to-support-wi-fi-calling-for-apples-iphone-6-iphone-6-plus-in-2015#post_2596968"]"We don't have a burning desire or need for coverage," AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega said Friday when asked why the carrier was lagging behind competitors, according to CNET. "Other operators with less coverage may pursue it more aggressively."[/quote] What a cocky arrogant prick. I have ZERO reception not only in my office but within at least a dozen yards outside of my office, but we do have a strong Wifi network.