MetroPCS will begin transition to VoLTE early next year

US carriers were quick to recognize their allegiance to Voice over LTE ( VoLTE ), a 4G VoIP-related technology first demonstrated in February. Ever since that point, however, talk of deployment plans has been replaced by crickets. MetroPCS was the primary to damage the silence, as CEO Roger Linquist announced at this morning’s quarterly earnings call that his company’s “planning to start introducing VoLTE-capable handsets early next year to transport voice in addition to data traffic to [its] LTE network.” The outfit’s wasting no time making the whole transition to 4G, as it’s already begun migrating its SMS and MMS services to this service. An increasing sense of urgency is probably going hitting the corporate hard, as implementing VoLTE will ease a few of the burden of its limited spectrum by devoting more bandwidth to 4G. What’s better, the expected timeframe may also allow MetroPCS to conquer Verizon to market — which has also targeted 2012 as a launch date for its equivalent service — in addition to AT&T, currently aiming for a 2013 takeoff . It doesn’t matter what, we’re ecstatic to soon be flooded with more HD-clarity calls than we care to take.