BICS on Tuesday laid claim to the world’s first international, end-to-end voice over LTE (VoLTE) call.
The call, which took place between Belgian mobile operator Proximus and South Korea’s SK Telecom, paves the way for subscribers in those countries to conduct high definition, packet-switched mobile voice calls between the two countries, and eventually video calls too.
The call was carried over the IPX networks of BICS and SK Telink, the international carrier business of SK Telecom.
"SK Telecom prides itself on pushing the boundaries of innovation and this latest announcement further enhances our position as the service leader in the Republic of Korea. International VoLTE provides the best in class voice quality demanded by customers already enjoying the service domestically," said Jin-Hyo Park, head of SK Telecom’s network technology R&D centre, in a statement.
Unsurprisingly, BICS took the opportunity to talk up the capabilities of its IPX VoLTE Hub, which can detect whether a VoLTE call has been placed to an incompatible handset, or one that does not have LTE coverage, and switch to a circuit-switched call as needed.
"Provi ding exceptional quality of experience to customers is of paramount importance to us, and launching international VoLTE was the next logical step we needed to take to enhance our voice offering," said Laurent Claus, director services platforms and cloud at Proximus.
