Voice and SMS over LTE

Metro PCS - the first LTE smartphone?

As reported by Light Reading, apparently Metro PCS, a regional CDMA service provider in the US, could be getting an LTE smartphone from Samsung as early as this year.

Some caveats:

Of course there is no IMS telephony, so Metro PCS must do an interim solution for voice. As a CDMA operator, their only choice is CS Fallback.

VoLGA, the low-cost, low impact solution for providing simultaneous voice and data over LTE, has not been defined for CDMA networks. Do you want to guess what Verizon will offer too?

It looks like AT&T is going to be able to continue to advertise their advanage of being able to "talk and surf the web at the same time" for a little bit longer.

Still interested in CS Fallback?

There's a war going on here in the US.  It started with the iPhone overloading AT&T's 3G network.  

To capitalize, Verizon Wireless (VZW) started it's 'We've got a MAP for that' campaign, saying their 3G coverage map is 5 times larger than AT&T.  

Today AT&T is unloading with both barrels back at VZW.  They launched a'Truth About 3G' site, and have started aggresively running ads. 

The key message:  

With VZW, you can't talk and surf the web at the same time.

The message might sound familiar: it's the same problem with CS Fallback.  

With VZW's network, the 3G service is "EV-DO", which partially stands for "data-Only".  Verizon's 3G network is data only.  If you want to make a call, you need to 'fall back' to the CDMA network.  

With CS Fallback, the LTE network is 'data only'.  If you want to make a call, you need to 'fall back' to the GSM network.