Verizon plans to offer the Wi-Fi calling feature in mid-2015: iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users need to wait awhile
Verizon Communications has announced its plans to support Wi-Fi calling for its customers in one year. Their Chief Financial Officer - Fran Shammo at a conference, confirmed the news. He elaborated and placed the blame for the delay on upgrading the technical capacities of their existing network.
It ought to be mentioned that the new launches by Apple - iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus both support Wi-Fi calling and since the announcement by Apple about this feature, the networks have been scrambling backwards to provide this option to the users.
At the conference, the Verizon CFO was questioned that why wasn't their technology capable enough to support Wi-Fi calling and in his defense he replied that they had focused on their voice platform in a brutal way and had made it absolutely top-notch and they didn't expect their customers would resort to Wi-Fi calling. He also added that the company was hesitant about introducing this feature because then the voice quality of the calls would be out of their control totally. He elaborated and said that, if a customer is using the option of Wi-Fi calling at a public space like an airport then due to the traffic on the Wi-Fi, the voice quality would be very bad and then the carrier would get blamed.
Verizon is trying desperately to pull up its socks, since another major carrier T-mobile recently announced that they would support Wi-Fi calling on their network. Thus they would effectively be the first provider in the US to do so. This has needless to say, spurred the other competitors into action and they are upgrading their facilities, else they fear that their consumer base would be eaten up by T-mobile.
