Idea launches VoLTE service in 9 circles

Idea Cellular on Monday announced the launch of VoLTE services in 9 cricles —Mumbai, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, UP (East), UP (West), Bihar & Jharkhand and Rajasthan. Following this, the company is now offering the service in 15 cricles. Earlier this month, it had launched VoLTE in Maharashtra & Goa, MP & Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, AP & Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Besides launching VoLTE, Idea is also offering its subscribers 30GB of 4G data free. Subscribers will be offered 10 GB data on making the first VoLTE call and additional 10 GB on providing feedback on the service after 4 weeks. They will also be offered another 10 GB on giving feedback after 8 weeks.

Idea’s chief marketing officer Sashi Shankar said, “Idea customers across 15 markets will now be able to experience high definition voice calls on VoLTE. In addition to network expansion, Idea has been focussed at providing attractive voice and data plans for postpaid and prepaid customers along with forging partnerships with handset makers”.

The service is accessible on 4G handsets powered by Idea 4G SIM, while existing customers with compatible 4G handsets will be automatically upgraded to VoLTE. Currently, the service is available on Vivo V7 Plus, Honor 5C, Honor 6X, Honor 7X, Honor View10, Honor 9 lite and Honor 9i handsets.

Customers with Xiaomi Redmi4, Samsung J7 Pro/A5/A7, One Plus 5/5T/6 and Nokia 3/5 plus devices will soon get over the air (OTA) updates to enable then to experience VoLTE service.

The development will help the operator in adding more 4G data subscribers to its network. With wireless data adoption in FY18 witnessing a steep surge with unlimited data bundled plans, Idea reported a record wireless broadband data subscriber addition of 15.1 million this year, improving its overall broadband penetration from around 13% in FY17 to 20.5% in FY18. Its wireless broadband subscriber base (3G/4G) now stands at 39.8 million out of total 46.8 million mobile data users.

IDEA Cellular Limited