AT&T Targeting VoLTE Capabilities by 2013
Feb 16, 2011, 6:43 AM by Eric M. Zeman
Speaking in an interview with Forbes, AT&T's CTO John Donovan said that the company plans to deploy Voice over LTE (VoLTE) on its forthcoming LTE network by the year 2013. Donovan said that AT&T is waiting for VoLTE's standards to be more fully finalized, and is working aggressively on plans to transition voice services from its current network to VoLTE, though the entire process is part of a seven-year plan to make improvements to its voice capabilities. By the time this plan is complete, AT&T will shut down its TDM (time-division multiplexing) platform for services that run fully on LTE. Donovan also confirmed that AT&T is paying attention to bandwidth on its network. He believes that the public should approach similarly to the environment with respect to conservation. "A wireless network is a shared resource just like water and land," he said. "It's in everyone's best interest to manage supply and demand." For example, AT&T has software that watches how applications use the network. AT&T sends alerts to developers whose apps use too much bandwidth and counsels them on how to revise their app.
