The Silicon Review ^Asia

Ericsson, a Sweden-based telecom gear manufacturer has bagged the rights to provide VoLTE calling technology to Bharati Airtel, Economic Times reported on Wednesday.

Bharati Airtel is looking to strengthen its VoLTE services for its customers through the new initiative. For Ericsson, this is the first time for them to win a contract for VoLTE service.

For the Indian telecom companies, Finland’s Nokia has been the only company to provide VoLTE technology.

The new contract has paved the way for Airtel to roll out a multi-vendor approach to its network for VoLTE service in the country. As per reports by the ET, earlier, Airtel has given a large VoLTE deal worth Rs 402 crore to Nokia.

The company is providing its VoLTE service to 22 circles within the country. People familiar with the matter confirmed the development to ET. The new contract will be initially for one circle, but the scope can be increased.

Through VoLTE technology, a telecom provider needs not to switch bands in order to provide voice and data services, with voice being just another application that depends on LTE data network. LTE data network is used by Reliance Jio to carry out its PAN India operations. Other telecom operators such as Vodafone Idea including Airtel also provide calling facility on the legacy circuit-switch technology.

According to reports, by 2023, India’s LTE (VoLTE) voice users will be around 780 million and smartphone subscriptions in the country will be more than 975 million.