T-Mobile will be Apple’s first partner in the U.S. to enable phone calls over WiFi when a cellular connection is poor or not available.
The announcement was made this morning by Apple’s Phil Schiller as part of the company’s unveiling of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.
In addition to larger screens on the new phones, Apple talked up a number of new technology advancements, including Wi-Fi calling. Schiller said the iPhone 6 will support Voice over LTE, also known as VoLTE.
As of July, the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier, which coincidentally is hosting a press event tomorrow in San Francisco, became the first carrier to launch nationwide VoLTE, covering more than 230 million people. (An earlier version of this story said it was live in only 15 markets, but that was referencing outdated information.)
T-Mobile has said before the benefits of VoLTE include faster call setup times (almost twice as fast as a non-VoLTE call setup) and the ability to enjoy “lightning fast” LTE data speeds while on a call, so you can talk while browsing the web, for example.
A T-Mobile spokeswoman declined to comment.
With the iPhone 6, Schiller said Apple will allow customers for the first time to hand-off calls from a WiFi network to a cellular network, when you are walking from inside your house to outdoors, for example.
The first carriers to launch these WiFi calling capabilities include T-Mobile in the U.S. and EE in the UK.
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