Apple Job Listings Hint at VoLTE for Next-Gen iPhones

Following reports of WiFi calling coming to iOS 8, new job postings suggest that Apple is gearing up to add support for VoLTE (Voice-over LTE) to the iPhone. The job listings were spotted by LightReading (via GigaOm).

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Apple is looking for a cellular systems protocol engineer, and among the key qualifications, 3 years of hands-on experience with wireless technologies such as VoLTE and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) are required. Other positions require experience with the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). The latter is needed to create a connection between devices and LTE networks.

Apple is also looking for a senior baseband engineer to work on “cutting-edge” audio for its devices, which will include the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) speech compression codec, which is part of the VoLTE specification. The engineer will help to “implement, port, and deploy AMR-WB, AMR-NB, CELP, EVRC-B, EVRC, EVS Vocoders, and Jitter Buffers on Mobile devices,” according to the ad.

This, however, doesn’t mean that Apple will incorporate VoLTE in the iPhone 6, as the company is expected to unveil the next-generation handset in September and only started looking for VoLTE experts a couple of days ago.

As LightReading emphasizes, of the four US carriers, only T-Mobile has HD VoLTE available across its network. Verizon announced that it will launch VoLTE by the end of the year, and AT&T has VoLTE in parts of four states in the US.

After Apple unveiled plans to incorporate WiFi calling in iOS 8, Rogers confirmed to iPhone in Canada that it will support that feature, although we couldn’t spot it during our tests with iOS 8 betas.

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