AT&T Gets Closer to Adding Wi-Fi Calling to iPhones

AT&T also pointed out that rivals Sprint and T-Mobile United States have been offering voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) without a TTY waiver.

Shares of AT&T (T), which asked for the waiver in June, were up almost 1% Wednesday to $33.17. It was already made available on a beta version of iOS 9 sometime ago, but it couldn’t be launched alongside the platform, since the FCC requires services like it to support teletypewriter (TTY) for the hearing-impaired.

“We’re grateful the FCC has granted AT&T’s waiver request so we can begin providing WiFi calling”, said Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs at AT&T, in a public policy blog post on Tuesday. The document notes that AT&T will be allowed to rollout Wi-Fi calling without the need of TTY and has until December 31, 2017 to rollout RTT (real-time text). Today, the FCC has approved the waiver and will allow AT&T to support Wi-Fi calling without supporting TTY.

He added that the agency should open an investigation or enforce action against these companies as they have not followed protocol.

Then again, the only thing really stopping AT&T from moving forward before was its own self-regulation in the face of its competitors flouting the rules the FCC hadn’t stopped it. Had it felt rebellious, it could’ve deployed anyway, but the marketing value of calling out T-Mobile’s transgressions might be far greater than enabling a feature that lies in a legal gray area. “This is exactly what we meant when our letter spoke of concerns about asymmetric regulation”.

AT&T has welcomed the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) decision to grant it a temporary waiver that paves the way for the telco to roll out WiFi calling.

So what now? Well, AT&T hasn’t given a timeline as to when we can expect initial deployment, though we’re sure they’ve been laying the groundwork behind the scenes to make sure it doesn’t take too long.