GLOBE Telecom, Inc. announced on Monday that its Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) service — the standard high-speed wireless communication for mobile phones using fourth-generation (4G) LTE — is now available to postpaid customers in 94% of all towns in the Philippines.
“Globe’s efforts to provide a better mobile experience to its customers have made it possible to have VoLTE service available to postpaid customers in 94% of all towns in the country,” Globe said in an e-mailed statement.
Globe Chief Commercial Officer Issa G. Cabreira said 30% of Globe’s postpaid customers are now on VoLTE.
“We are seeing a consistent monthly growth rate of around 8% in terms of customer adoption,” she added.
Ms. Cabreira also said Globe is confident that more customers will latch on to the new service in the coming months.
“Compared to the old voice services of 2G and 3G networks, VoLTE has many advantages. It has three times more voice capacity than 3G and up to six times more compared to 2G, allowing the network to accommodate more customers placing calls at the same time, enabling faster call setup, providing clearer voice quality, and lower instances of dropped calls,” Globe said.
“VoLTE also allows users to simultaneously connect to the internet while on a call and this provides an uninterrupted mobile browsing experience especially with online gaming and video streaming,” it added.
Globe also introduced an added complement to VoLTE, the Voice Over WiFi (VoWiFi) or WiFi Calling.
This feature “helps address indoor mobile coverage problems such as voice calls affected by the distance between the mobile phone and the nearest network tower, building walls that block wireless signals, and poor signal inside a home or building,” Globe said.
“Depending on the capacity and signal strength of their WiFi service and a VoWiFi-capable mobile phone, VoWiFi can resolve these concerns because customers can use their existing WiFi connection to make phone calls.” — Arjay L. Balinbin