Celcom has finally enabled Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) for its users after enabling Voice over LTE (VoLTE) a couple of years ago. VoWiFi allows users to take advantage of their Wi-Fi connection at home or anywhere else they might be connected to and make clearer phone calls even with little to no mobile coverage.
Aside from high-definition calls, Celcom is also promising phone calls that start twice as fast as regular calls when using either VoWiFi or VoLTE, as well as claiming that it will not interrupt your online gaming session if you make a call in the middle of playing. Of course, this depends on the connection’s quality which needs to be at least 25 kbps and the telco also notes that some public Wi-Fi networks might have policies in place to block Wi-Fi calling.
While this all sounds great, it comes with a huge caveat for Celcom customers. As of writing, the network’s VoWiFi feature has limited support and is only compatible with nine smartphones, including vivo X80, vivo X80 Pro, Huawei Mate 20, Huawei Mate 20 X, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Huawei P30, Huawei P30 Pro, Huawei Nova 5T, and Nokia X20.
If you are using one of the nine phones that support Celcom’s VoWiFi feature, you can enable it by going into the mobile data sections of your phone’s settings and turn on the Wi-Fi Calling option although vivo’s phones apparently already enable it by default. Once enabled, you should see the VoWiFi logo in the status bar when you are connected to Wi-Fi which looks similar to the VoLTE logo.
Using VoWiFi incurs no additional charges and you can also send & receive SMS through Wi-Fi via the feature although you will not be able to use it while roaming. As for Celcom’s sub-brand Yoodo, the telco has not announced any plans to enable Wi-Fi Calling though and it has just recently activated VoLTE for its users almost two years after the service was made available by Celcom.
For users of other telcos, this feature shouldn’t be new to them. U Mobile was the first to roll out VoWiFi in Malaysia all the way back in 2016, followed by Digi shortly afterwards and then Maxis at the end of last year, all of which have a much more extensive list of compatible devices.
(Source: Celcom.)
