2017-08-13, 19:57 PM

VoLTE also allows you to talk over Verizon's Band 13 (700 MHz), which in some cases can penetrate buildings better than the frequencies they use for traditional CDMA voice. In areas where Verizon has licenses for the 850 MHz cellular band (A and/or B-side) the difference probably won't be enough to notice, since 700MHz and 850Mhz have similar propagation characteristics, but in areas where they have to use the 1900MHz PCS band for CDMA voice (like my corner for FL, where AT&T owns both 850MHz-band licenses) it can be more significant.

I'd say the FCC screwed up a bit when dividing up some of the 700 MHz frequencies after these were reclaimed from UHF television, making the "upper C block" used by Verizon only 11 MHz wide, which isn't enough for both a 10MHz LTE carrier as well as CDMA voice (1.25 MHz plus guard bands) side-by-side. 12 MHz would have been enough room. Instead they created 1 MHz narrowband licenses on either side that are too small for just about any modern cellular technology (a few 2G GSM carriers could fit, or the old Nextel iDen, etc), and so remain unused across most of the country.