Vodafone Australia announced a major upgrade of its core network with Ericsson, reported Telecompaper.com on Aug 20, 2014. The upgrade will offer greater network agility and flexibility, create cost efficiencies, and enable the introduction of new 4G services such as voice over LTE. This will improve customer experience by providing HD voice calling. In addition, VoLTE also allows users to access voice and data services at the same time over LTE without compromising data connectivity speeds. The company said it expects to launch VoLTE in 2015, following trials later this year.

Last month, Vodafone said its 4G network would reach 95 percent of Australia’s metropolitan population by the end of 2014 by using its low-band 850MHz spectrum. The rapid expansion of its LTE coverage and high quality of data services has been a major focus of its marketing as it looks to turn around the decline in customers in recent years.

The core network upgrade is part of a five-year network evolution program that will also see Vodafone adopting Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV). The operator will use Ericsson\'s equipment for Evolved Packet Core and IP Multimedia Subsystem, policy control and circuit-switched core. Ericsson will provide integration services for voice and packet core that will support full virtualization of the core network over the next five years.