World Telecoms Lab believes that with Voice over LTE (VoLTE), telecoms operators now have an opportunity to grow in spite of the increasing negative impact of OTT services on revenues accruing to mobile operators in Africa.

In its 2017 forecast, World Telecoms Lab predicted that the current surging data growth will still not threaten voice. Instead, it said voice will remain vital - particularly as VoLTE drives further voice traffic growth.

It stated: "It is essential that we remember this fact, even while pursuing new service innovation. In fact, we've seen the impact of this in regions where we have provided new coverage – voice traffic grows long before data consumption starts to soar. We expect that the success of Vivada at Amotel will unlock similar partnerships, bringing connectivity to more people who need it than ever before."

It also revealed that by making investments in LTE, operators will be able to break out from their focus on metro areas and extend coverage.

"Even as data growth accelerates, it's easy to forget that voice remains of fundamental importance – people like and need to speak to other people, and the human connection remains of fundamental importance to daily life," World Telecoms Lab stated.

In Nigeria where World Telecoms Lab is providing services to several operators, VoLTE is still relatively new. The first VoLTE-enabled call made only about eleven months ago on the NTel network.

During the launch, the company said VoLTE calls connect faster upon dialing and feature ultra-clear high-definition voice quality. However, telecoms subscribers, industry players and other stakeholders still believe that the quality of telecoms services in the country can be greatly improved and it is difficult to convince subscribers that VoLTE is better than what they currently have since similar promises had been made about other products in the past.

Smile Communications is another operator that offers VoLTE service in Nigeria and the company believes that the voice calls will be enhanced by VoLTE.

The company's CEO, Michiel Buitelaar, noted at the launch of VoLTE on Smile Communications that the move to roll out the service became necessary considering the fact that broadband is becoming the current industry focus.

"The market is moving much faster in the broadband direction and we want Nigerians to embrace the broadband as the place to be. There are a lot of quality issues in the Nigerian market and there are a lot of opportunities for those that provide real quality, like breaking one's call and getting immediate value from the network. The quality of our voice will definitely beat the existing benchmark in the Nigerian market," he said.