EE has announced that it will start to trial phone calls over Wi-Fi and 4G this year, which is good news indeed.
Currently when you make a phone call on a 4G handset in the UK your phone actually switches to the available 2G or 3G network, as the superfast connection can only currently support data.
The benefit of being able to make calls over 4G means coverage will be expanded into rural areas where current 2G and 3G signals struggle to reach, opening up more of the country to mobile.
This is Wi-Fi calling
With the addition of calls over Wi-Fi you won't even have to worry about phone signal, as your phone will be able to use your Wi-Fi network to connect a call.
That means you'll be able to make calls (and send texts) from previous mobile blackspots if they are covered by Wi-Fi (your basement at home for example) and EE will formerly launch the Wi-Fi service in Autumn this year.
EE states it will only be available "on the latest handsets capable of supporting the service" so we'll have to wait and see which phones that actually covers.
For those of you holding out for the 4G voice calls (aka VoLTE), you'll have to wait until 2015 for EE to properly launch the service with trials starting later this year in rural Oxfordshire.
Of course you'll need to be an EE customer to make use of these new features, and while the other networks haven't announced anything similar to this yet, we expect it will be only a matter of time before they do.
