Telstra unveiled recently at its Investor Relations Day, that it has activated the Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) technology on its 4G network and has embarked on internal testing with end-user devices for the next phase of fine-tuning and optimization. The largest Operator in Australia aims to commercially launch VoLTE as soon as there are sufficient number of devices supporting the service, and aims to boost the service further with Video over LTE (ViLTE), which enables multi-media calling in addition to HD voice communications.
According to the Operator, it is also intensifying its initiatives in the LTE-Advanced space as part of its aim to make 4G speeds faster and has been carrying out LTE-A carrier aggregation testings. Completing the LTE-A testing based on three carrier aggregation and achieving peak speeds of 450 megabits per second, Telstra is moving ahead to run similar tests on the live commercial network aiming to reach theoretical speeds of 600 megabits per second. Telstra claims that it has recorded 590 megabits per second in its early stage testing on a live network. The carrier aggregation used to achieve these speeds involve 20MHz of spectrum aggregated on the 1800MHz band involving two (FDD) 20MHz channels on the 2600MHz band. The Operator currently offers 150Mbps speeds on its 4GX network that is based on carrier aggregation across the 1800MHz and 700MHz spectrum bands.