Data speeds unacceptable while on voice calls!

[GCrane1982]

I am not a network engineer however I have worked for one of the largest carriers in Australia for many, many year. As far as I know most carriers (the ones here in Australia anyway) do not support simultaneous voice and data on the same radio. This means that when you are in a 3G or 3.5G coverage area and you make or receive a voice call on 3G your data will be off loaded to a radio which is not being used, in most cases 2G. If you are in a 4G coverage area and you make or receive a voice call, your data will be off loaded to the 3G or 2G radio which would make for a significant reduction in DL speed. Some other carrier around the world do not support voice services over 4G so for these luck customers they will maintain a 4G data connection even when they are making or receiving a voice call on the 3G radio.

Just so you know our network speeds in Australia are defined as below

2G - Edge/GPRS
3G
3.5G - HSDPA+ or Next G
4G - LTE

 

[vedichymn]

Just did a quick test... no speed drop on Verizon LTE when a call is connected. (Lumia 928)

Isn't this the case because voice is going over CDMA and data over the LTE modem? I'm not aware of Verizon doing voice over LTE anywhere yet (although I do believe they were going to trial it in their Alaska buildout).

 

[tk-093]

Isn't this the case because voice is going over CDMA and data over the LTE modem? I'm not aware of Verizon doing voice over LTE anywhere yet (although I do believe they were going to trial it in their Alaska buildout).

Yeah, good point, that's it. However, once they go to VoLTE, it will just be data packets like anything else so you should be able to maintain great speeds while on voice calls. Though I'm sure the carriers will find a way to charge us for "minutes" even though it's just data.. Heck, they will probably charge us for minutes, and data against our caps.