Our sources at Verizon shared some juicy details with us regarding their new VoLTE network upgrade. Here's a quick breakdown of everything we know right now.
- First, HD Voice will be treated just like your current voice minutes and will not eat through your data with extra fees. For example, if you are on an older Unlimited Data Plan, using HD Voice on their VoLTE network will still count against your minutes if you do not have unlimited minutes, but it won't impact your data. Alternatively, if you are on one of Verizon's newer plans which have limited data but unlimited calls, then you will not have to worry about being charged for any of your calls, and they won't count towards your data cap.
- Second, initially there will only be two devices which can use the VoLTE service. This is the LG G2 and the Samsung Galaxy S5. Eventually other devices will be added to the list of compatible hardware which can handle the HD Voice and other VoLTE services, but they will need to be updated first.
- Third, HD Voice is actually called Advanced Calling 1.0. This new "feature" includes both HD Voice and their new Video Calling service. The HD Voice calling will have much better call quality. In order to take advantage of Video Calling the service will create a group inside your contacts linking you to others who can also use video calling.
- Fourth, just as we shared in our last article on the subject, there is no hand-off to CDMA from the VoLTE voice calls. This means if you leave a 4G LTE area (or enter a building which interferes with Verizon's LTE), then your call will be dropped. As an interesting sidenote, video calls can hand off between WiFi and LTE.
- Finally, in regards to billing on video calls, these will use up your minutes and your data. The voice portion of the video call will use up your minutes (if you don't have unlimited minutes), while the video portion of your call will use your LTE data. Verizon estimates that a video call will use around 7MB of data per minute on a call.
