Verizon has announced plans to roll out Wi-Fi calling by mid-2015, shortly after T-Mobile.
Verizon's plans of supporting Wi-Fi calling were announced by CFO Fran Shammo while speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference, this week. Shammo indicated that the network needs "some technological work" before the roll-out begins, Fierce Wireless reported.
Shammo indirectly hinted at the lack of support for Wi-Fi calling by taking a shot at T-Mobile. He said the breadth of Verizon's voice network dismissed the need of implementing an alternate solution for its subscribers to make calls.
"We built our voice platform so extensively [that] there was never a need for us to tell our customers, 'Oh, our network is not good enough so you need to go on Wi-Fi to complete your call,'" Fierce Wireless quoted Shammo as saying during the conference.
Verizon's announcement comes a week after T-Mobile introduced the seventh edition of its Un-carrier program, Wi-Fi Unleashed. T-Mobile is the only wireless provider in the U.S. to support Wi-Fi calling on the latest Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Sprint has already offered Wi-Fi calling service for Android smartphones on its network since February but hasn't made any announcements regarding the support for the feature on new Apple iPhones.
In wake of the growing competition, AT&T has also announced support for the new feature, but the roll out will happen only by next year.
