While operators in the U.S. are showing more interest in offering Wi-Fi calling, their counterparts in the UK are eyeing the benefits of offering native Wi-Fi calling as well.
EE became the first operator in the UK to roll out Wi-Fi calling as a dialer-integrated service, although Three UK has been offering the Three InTouch app for longer. In October, EE said its Wi-Fi calling service had 1.7 million activated users with more than 125 million Wi-Fi calls made since the launch in the first quarter of this year.
EE's strategy with Wi-Fi calling was first and foremost to limit churn by providing coverage where it had not been available before. But the operator is not going to throw its support behind Wi-Fi for other functions such as data offloading, saying the data experience is better on LTE and it doesn't want to offload traffic. For more on what European operators are doing with Wi-Fi – and perhaps just as importantly, what they are not doing -- check out this FierceWireless:Europe special report.