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Some customers of mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media), specifically those on their Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans, this week began to notice the sudden appearance of Wi-Fi Calling on their service (ISPreview Forum) and 4G Calling (VoLTE) is also expected to follow by the end of this year.
O2’s PAYG plans have long lacked support for 5G (mobile broadband), WiFi Calling (Voice over WiFi) and 4G Calling (Voice over LTE). But earlier this month that all started to change after the operator finally began to deploy 5G support (here) and they now seem to be in the process of adding WiFi Calling too. A spokesperson for VMO2 confirmed to ISPreview that they were indeed “starting to roll this service out in phases to our customer base“.
Just to recap. VoWiFi enables consumers with a supporting Smartphone and mobile operator to harness their home broadband connection, or another WiFi network, to make mobile voice calls (and sometimes also texts), instead of using your mobile (2G, 4G or 5G) network. The feature is extremely useful, particularly when away from a good mobile signal, but support can still be patchy between different networks and devices.
The change is not unexpected as the operator recently confirmed, as part of their 3G switch-off strategy, that “4G & WiFi calling will be available for Pay As You Go customers by the end of 2025“. But it often takes several months for such phased deployments to reach completion, thus starting that process around now does make sense (i.e. if they hope to deliver it by the end of the year).
The catch is that some of those PAYG customers who initially reported seeing VoWiFi going live have since seen it disappear again, which will hopefully be rectified as their deployment continues. As for 4G Calling, we haven’t seen any signs of that one yet, but historically VoWiFi and VoLTE have tended to be deployed at around the same time by other operators (VoLTE just allows calls to go via 4G instead of the older 2G network).