South Korea’s third largest mobile operator, LG Uplus, Sunday announced that it has commercially launched VoLTE roaming services partnering with KDDI in Japan with plans to work with more roaming partners soon. The service will initially be available on LG’s G Flex 2 smartphones in South Korea and Japan and will be expanded in near future to other VoLTE-ready devices.
LG Uplus rolled out its nationwide LTE service in 2012 and enabled Single VoLTE services in July 2013 based on LTE-A Carrier Aggregation. LG Uplus explained that the VoLTE service connects calls in just 0.25 to 2.5 seconds, 20 times faster than 3G. With the latest roaming offer, LG Uplus subscribers can enjoy HD voice and video calls that offer enhanced quality, nearly real-sound experience, and minimal call connection delay, while traveling abroad to Japan. LG Uplus subscribers can also enjoy sharing of music, location, photos, and other contents during HD voice calls.
The operator said that it has collaborated with other leading LTE operators and succeeded with trial testing in November 2014 based on the S8 Home Routed VoLTE roaming architecture. The S8 Home Routed VoLTE roaming architecture that connects the Visited Network’s SGW (Serving Gateway) and Home Network’s PGW (Packet Gateway) using built-in Home Network IMS, allows LG Uplus to more efficiently develop VoLTE roaming services without additional architecture changes.
