Singapore, 4 December 2013 – Singapore’s second largest mobile operator StarHub has today become the first in Southeast Asia to successfully dial GSM Voice over LTE (VoLTE) calls on its “live” 4G network in Plaza Singapura. The landmark achievement comes after StarHub attained island-wide street-level 4G coverage in October 2013 and nine months after it launched Singapore’s first HD Voice over 3G.
VoLTE enables customers to make HD Voice calls over a 4G network, by allowing more speech information to be sent – broader frequency range and over twice the bandwidth as compared to standard voice calls. This results in natural-sounding and significantly clearer phone conversations with reduced background noise.
StarHub aims to enable this feature for customers next year when a wide selection of popular VoLTE-capable phone models becomes available for its fast expanding 4G smartphone customer base, which has more than doubled since the start of this year.
“Crossing this major VoLTE milestone marks a great leap forward for StarHub. With VoLTE and HD Voice on StarHub’s 4G and 3G networks, our customers can enjoy supreme crystal clear voice quality when talking to their loved ones anytime, anywhere,” said Mr Chan Kin Hung, Head of Personal Solutions at StarHub. “Today, we are thrilled to demonstrate our ability to enable richer, future-ready communication services for our customers that can bring them closer to their family and friends through StarHub’s innovations.”
StarHub deployed an end-to-end all-IP VoLTE solution from Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN), which in turn has adopted the GSM Association’s (GSMA) standard for delivering telecom-grade voice and messaging services over 4G (GSMA VoLTE IR.92 specification based on international 3GPP standards) to ensure that devices and networks are interoperable.
“We are pleased to collaborate with StarHub to pave the way for the introduction of next-generation communication services in Singapore,” said Mr Paul Tyler, Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific at NSN. “As their long-standing technology partner, we will continue to provide our technology and expertise to enable StarHub to deliver innovative services to its customers.”
