AT&T Apple iPhone 6 to Lack Wi-Fi Calling Initially

AT&T Apple iPhone 6 to Lack Wi-Fi Calling Initially

Are you all excited to get your new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus soon? Well you should be. After all, it’s one of the latest and greatest smartphones to have hit the market. In the U.S., all carriers are offering the latest Apple flagship devices and pre-orders have already started. But if you’re on AT&T and are expecting to use the Wi-Fi calling feature available in iOS 8, you might be disappointed.

Wi-Fi calling is one of the most attractive features in Apple’s iOS 8, allowing you to make calls using Wi-Fi hotspots instead of relying on the cellular network. It comes in handy especially when you’re out of your home network and need to pay roaming fees for making calls. So far, T-Mobile is the only major carrier to have enabled this feature in the U.S. T-Mobile has been actively promoting Wi-Fi calling on its network, offers the feature at no extra cost and is offering it on all the new phones it’s selling.

AT&T iPhone 6 to get Wi-Fi calling next year

Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobile group, has said that the company will be offering the Wi-Fi calling facility by next year. He was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference. He didn’t seem too excited about the feature and mentioned that AT&T is looking to offer Wi-Fi calling capabilities only as a complement to its regular Voice-over-LTE and 3G voice services.

So far, the Wi-Fi calling feature was only available on Android. But with iOS 8, iPhone users can also start using the feature and not worry about poor signal reception issues. There are a lot of areas where cellular reception isn’t the greatest when you need to make an urgent call. With AT&T finally confirming Wi-Fi calling, it now remains to be seen when Verizon and Sprint will roll out the feature. It does seem likely they will also roll out the feature by next year.