How to activate Safaricom VoLTE on supported devices

Safaricom VoLTE is now live in many parts of Kenya after the official launch back in June. But the uptake has been slow. I for one have had all the prerequisites since day one but haven’t gotten it to work. Customer care hasn’t been of that much help though, until now.

If you have a VoLTE enabled device and have a 4G Safaricom SIM Card, follow these simple steps to try activate your VoLTE feature.

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  • First Enable VoLTE option from your phone’s settings: Network & Internet – Mobile Network – Activate Enhanced 4G LTE Mode (or VoLTE depending on your phone)
  • Then Dial *100*12#
  • Select Option 3 then Enable VoLTE for your SIM card
  • You should then see a pop-up notification that VoLTE has been enabled for your SIM

And that is it. If everything works as planned, you should see the VoLTE icon if you are in a Safaricom 4G area.

Gadgets Africa reports that currently, only Samsung devices seem to be supporting video calls on VoLTE, which means if you call another Samsung device from your Samsung device, you’ll have the option of changing your voice call to a video call.

VoLTE calls (including video calls) will not require a data connection, so you will be billed with the normal tariffs for calls. Safaricom VoLTE only works on the Safaricom network, in areas covered by 4G.

Many people have reported issues after activating VoLTE, like not being able to receive calls and being ‘unreachable to others. For such users, you can follow the same procedure and deactivate VoLTE.

For me, I noticed I wasn’t able to make calls to customer care and to a number of shortcode services and 0800 numbers. Safaricom customer care doesn’t seem to know why that is and so I just turned it off entirely.

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