T-Mobile’s voice over 5G technology is live in Portland, Ore. and Salt Lake City. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
According to the US carriers, 5G has well and truly arrived. We did it! We won the race to 5G. But there’s one piece of the puzzle that’s still largely missing: voice. Phone calls still mainly rely on LTE networks, even where 5G data coverage is robust. Today, T-Mobile announced that it has taken a small step forward in making voice over 5G a reality. In Portland, Oregon, and Salt Lake City, Utah, some commercial calls will be routed via T-Mobile’s standalone 5G network.
Voice over 5G (referred to as Voice over New Radio, or VoNR) is a major challenge for the whole wireless industry, though all US carriers will likely want to move voice calling over to 5G sometime in the future to free up LTE spectrum for 5G. Voice calls over 5G are also…
