EE has announced a series of live trials of phones calls made over Wi-Fi and 4G, as part of a new multi-million pound investment in voice capabilities.
The new service aims to remove whitespots', within which residents of some of the UK's rural areas are unable to connect, by allowing customers to make high quality phone calls when only connected to Wi-Fi or 4G at home or at work.
EE plans to invest 275 million a year into the ongoing project, with more than 6,000 2G sites also upgraded and 2,000 3G site capacities increased to improve support.
Fotis Karonis, CTO at EE, said: "Our Wi-Fi calling capability will let customers make calls where they have access to WiFi but not to the mobile network.
"This is a major part of our strategy to invest in giving customers the ability to make a call wherever they are, and we're confident that this service can make a big difference to people in homes and large offices across the country, especially in the most rural areas, that don't have mobile coverage."
The Wi-Fi service is set to launch in autumn 2014, with the 4G service following in 2015. The delay in launching a 4G voice service is reportedly to ensure that the EE 4G network is as widespread as possible before it is rolled out for public use.
"4G calling, or VoLTE, is an exciting technology that we're going to be trialling in the coming months using our low frequency spectrum, bringing one of the world's best voice and data services to a part of rural Britain that has previously been unconnected," Karonis added.
"When we have rigorously tested the performance of 4G calling and made sure that it matches our 2G and 3G quality, we'll launch it nationwide on our 4G network."
