Bouygues Telecom on Wednesday launched a pilot voice over LTE (VoLTE) service, becoming the first operator in France to offer 4G calls to end users.
The trial involves 5,000 customers, including 700 corporate clients, equipped with either a Samsung Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge.
When Bouygues selected Ericsson in May 2014 to upgrade its 4G network to support VoLTE, the telco said it aimed to launch commercial VoLTE services this year.
However, in Wednesday’s brief announcement, Bouygues said VoLTE will be made available to eligible customers in 2016.
Nonetheless, it could still end up becoming the first mobile operator in France to offer such a service.
When Numericable-SFR opened its new R&D lab in Ile-de-France in June 2014, it announced its intention to become the first player in the country to offer VoLTE.
However, according to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), Numericable-SFR’s VoLTE deployment is currently underway but the service is still not live. Meanwhile, incumbent operator Orange is still in the planning phase.
France’s fourth-largest operator, Free Mobile, is not currently listed by the GSA as even planning a VoLTE service.
Furthermore, of the 30 commercially-launched VoLTE services worldwide, only nine of them are in Europe; the majority are in North America and Asia-Pacific.
