T-Mobile has proclaimed to have achieved another wireless first, launching commercial Voice Over New Radio (VoNR) service in limited areas of Portland, OR and Salt Lake City, UT, with plans to expand it to more areas this year.
“Standalone 5G is the future of wireless, and because it isn’t anchored to LTE, it will be capable of delivering a new level of performance with incredibly fast speeds, real-time responsiveness and massive connectivity. Now that Standalone 5G is beginning to carry voice traffic with the launch of VoNR, all services are possible on 5G,” said Neville Ray, T-Mobile President of Technology.
As the first nationwide standalone 5G network, T-Mobile will be able to roll out more 5G features, such as network slicing, which relies on a continuous connection to a 5G core. “VoNR represents the next step in the 5G maturity journey—an application that exists and operates in a complete end-to-end 5G environment,” says Jason Leigh, research manager, 5G & Mobility at IDC. “Migrating to VoNR will be a key factor in developing new immersive app experiences that need to tap into the full bandwidth, latency and density benefits offered by a 5G standalone network,” he added.
Jude Buckley, Executive Vice President, Mobile eXperience at Samsung Electronics America, said his company is supporting integration and testing of 5G technology for Samsung Galaxy devices. VoNR is available with the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G.
A1 Belarus claimed to make the first 5G HD call within the test 5G SA network using VoNR technology in 2020, according to the Fast Mode. The smartphone used was powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 1000 series SoC (System-on-Chip) on a 5G network launched by A1 in test mode at the October Square in Minsk, Belarus.
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