Free Video Calls? VoLTE vs Video Calling vs 3rd Party App-Video

Three years ago, a Second Standard school kid would not have known what video calling is. However, nowadays, our young Pakistani kid whose dad is working overseas asks his mother, “Ami could we please Skype with Abu, as he would be back from office by now?”

So how many of us have had a Skype call recently. Nearly every one of us knows what Skype Video Calling is; Or do we really? This question hit me last year at the launching announcements of the iPhone 6 series. When Apple told the audience their upcoming technology would incorporate VoLTE into the latest iOS, so “users enjoy seamless Video Calling facilities over LTE”. The term itself pretty much describes everything except that there are numerous technologies working side by side with the NEW SEAMLESS voice transmission. This time the tones do not drop, the voice does not repeat itself after we speak (looking at you Skype), and the call does not end until we want it to!

Are You Excited? So was I!

Here is the official word on VoLTE defined:-

VoLTE, an acronym for Voice over LTE, bases upon the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, specifies distinct profiles for control and media planes of LTE voice services. VoLTE results in voice services (control and media planes) being delivered as data flows within the LTE data bearer; meaning there is no dependency/requirement for maintaining legacy circuit-switched voice network. VoLTE has up to three times more voice and data capacity than 3G UMTS and up to six times more than 2G GSM. Furthermore, it frees up the bandwidth because VoLTE’s packets headers are smaller than those of the unoptimized VoIP/LTE are.

Therefore, it is THREE TIMES as powerful as normal 3G and SIX TIMES better than our Pakistani ex-2G-networks. Remember the Nokia Smartphone series, which had “Video Calling Options” using 3G networks? Moreover, do you know why the 2014/2015 Android Smartphone Vendors dropped the native video calling options in the latest handsets? The Video Calls used to utilize our 3G circuit-switch network (like regular voice calls) do and be heavy on both the cellular networks and the phone bills side by side. So came in SKYPE like a genie in the bottle!

The particular Genie we now know as Skype is an application that utilizes our Internet DATA Bundles instead of the native CSN. Other applications added the same functionality that includes the latest entree WhatsApp too. With this separate utilization, the cellular network stays at rest, and the user does not have to get heavy on the bills either. However, things still seemed out of place when calls dropped, voices ECHOed, and that “Pure Listening Experience” was not purely achievable. Therefore, the VoLTE jumped in! This technology brings to us all the goodies of being reasonable and packet-data based while adding the benefits of clear sound and lively experiences!

There is no doubt the technology will take its time to get used to it. However, once implemented everywhere, we will love every second of it since it will be reasonable and yet let us achieve much faster internet speeds! Until then, I prefer Facebook for video calls as it gives me the best calling experience until now. So what are you using for video calls?