Vodacom on Thursday said it has placed South Africa’s first “native” voice call on 5G – known as Voice over New Radio, or VoNR – using a test network.

The technology could soon be introduced in Vodacom’s live network for consumers to use, the telecommunications operator said in a statement, without providing a timeline.

It’s been about 10 years since South African mobile operators introduced VoLTE, or voice-over-LTE, calls. 5G smartphones step down to an older carrier technology like 4G/LTE for traditional phone calls. VoNR means more calls can now be carried over 5G infrastructure, which until now has been used exclusively to carry data.

“With the advent of VoLTE mobile services, users experienced improvements in call setup times and better call quality,” Vodacom said. “5G native VoNR calls will further build on this with even faster call setup times and superior voice quality with ultra-high-definition audio and reduced background noise.”

Vodacom said a “single packet core” was used for the test VoNR call. This is “typically complex to deploy, requiring cloud orchestration, cloud-native applications and network upgrades”.

Benefits of VoNR include faster call setup times than VoLTE or 3G, better voice quality (including support for high-quality voice), lower latency and improved phone battery life. End-user devices must, however, support 5G and VoNR — and many models, including recent devices from Apple and Samsung, support the technology.

Read: South Africa’s telcos battle to monetise 5G as 4G suffices for most

“The successful completion of this VoNR 5G call demonstrates the Vodacom network’s capability to provide smooth, uninterrupted, high-quality voice services across multiple access technologies.” — © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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