Mission-critical VoLTE gear could be available in 2018
LA-RICS plans to use VoLTE for non-mission-critical voice traffic, because there are not enough 700 MHz narrowband channels to support its public-safety users, much less the non-public-safety users that are on the T-Band system, Mallon said.
“Our long-term strategy is that we have to have an LTE system—preferably on the public-safety broadband network—that we can move to and then we can vacate the UHF T-Band only if we have voice communications over the LTE system,” Mallon said during the IWCE session.
“So, from my perspective, the need for voice over LTE and push-to-talk, one-to-many [voice communications] over LTE is absolutely essential, if we’re going to meet the needs going forward—unless the FCC comes up and gives us a whole bunch of spectrum.”