Global wholesale operator BICS said yesterday it “established the world’s first end-to-end” Voice over LTE (VoLTE) call between South Korea’s SK Telecom and Belgium’s Proximus.

High-definition voice traffic was carried over the IPX networks of BICS and SK Telink, the international carrier division of SK Telecom. The interworking trial demonstrated BICS’s IPX VoLTE hub, which supports end-to-end VoLTE interworking and roaming globally.

The VoLTE hub, which provides intelligent routing, can seamlessly support 4G-to-3G voice transition and interwork with legacy circuit-switched voice if a VoLTE call is attempted to a handset, which is either non-compliant, or does not have LTE coverage, BICS said in a statement.

It is designed to support IMS-based services such as video over LTE and Rich Communication Services (RCS).

Jorn Vercamert, VP at BICS’s voice business, said the company expects VoLTE usage over the next year to increase as end-users begin “to enjoy the superior quality communication in conjunction with high speed data usage”.

“We want to empower mobile operators to reinvigorate their offering to the end-users,” he said.

In June South Korea’s mobile operators – SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus – introduced the world’s first commercial interconnected VoLTE service. Previously, VoLTE services were only available to subscribers on the same network.

LG Uplus, the country’s third largest mobile operator, in April launched VoLTE roaming with Japan’s KDDI and said it planned to announce deals with additional foreign operators.