T2 has started launching voice communication over LTE on Russian Bulat base stations in the Nizhny Novgorod region. VoLTE on domestic equipment is already operating in the Spassky and Krasnooktyabrsky districts of the region, where the operator's and manufacturer's teams are debugging processes and testing the function.
Over the next three months, T2 plans to scale VoLTE to all Bulat base stations launched in 2024 and 2025. As a result, voice communication in the 4G network should become operational on several thousand stations across the country.
Both companies are part of the Rostelecom ecosystem, and the project is intended to expand the use of domestic equipment in mobile infrastructure. The first sites were chosen to verify the technology's operation and prepare for further deployment.
All operators were interested in launching VoLTE on Bulat base stations. Bulat base stations operate in the UCN 2.0 infrastructure segment and are in network sharing for all market participants.
VoLTE allows making voice calls over a 4G network without switching the smartphone to older communication standards. For users, this should mean a more stable connection, faster call setup, and better performance of voice services where new base stations are deployed.