Germany’s T-Mobile, or Deutsche Telekom, has made the first voice call over LTE using VoLGA technology.

The Voice over LTE via Generic Access specification was developed to provide operators an alternative to CS Fallback. VoLGA supporters argue Circuit Switch Fallback is an inadequate solution to handle voice over LTE networks, despite the technology’s backing from the 3GPP.

“The VoLGA test shows how operators could quickly and easily provide next-generation voice services, re-using their existing core networks,” said Uwe Janssen, senior vice president of core networks at Deutsche Telekom, in a press release. “At the same time, this serves as a first step to prepare networks for the industry-agreed mid- and long-term solution for voice over LTE that will be based on IMS.”

The test marks a vote of confidence on the part of Deutsche Telekom that it intends to move ahead with the controversial technology, which is not supported by the 3GPP standards body. So far, Deutsche Telekom is the only operator to openly support VoLGA.

The calls were made between a test system installed at Deutsche Telekom Headquarters in Bonn, Germany, based on a VoLGA implementation of Kineto Wireless and an independent system from Alcatel-Lucent, installed in their test center in Stuttgart, Germany. Both VoLGA-based Voice over LTE systems support inbound and outbound voice calling and SMS messaging between LTE-enabled devices and standard mobile and fixed telephones.

“Voice calling is an essential service for mobile operators. This demonstration is a key milestone towards establishing a future-proof ecosystem and shows a cost efficient way for using voice over LTE”, Janssen said.

VoLGA is purported to be a long-term interim solution before carriers migrate to IMS as a permanent method of handling voice over LTE networks. The alternative interim technology, CS Fallback, routes calls over legacy networks.

In a white paper commissioned by VoLGA supporter Kineto Wireless, analyst Dean Bubley called CS Fallback “dying if not already dead.”

“Charting a course on LTE, without understanding exactly when IMS telephony will arrive or how much it will cost, and without a viable alternative, is quite risky,” he said. “VoLGA supports all the standard mobile telephony capabilities in Deutsche Telekom’s network today, as well as all the value-added intelligent network capabilities like prepaid, local number portability, toll free calling and many more.”

AT&T (NYSE: T) sounded defensive about the speed of its network during a presentation to Wall Street analysts this morning. Currently, AT&T offers DSL-like speeds where it has HSDPA deployed, but AT&T’s Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said at a Morgan Stanley event today that by next year, it will start delivering speeds up to 20 mbps, and by 2010, they will surge to an impressive 100 mbps. Without saying it, I’m sure AT&T wanted us to point out that it will have a much faster network than the one being proposed by the high-profile Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel and Clearwire joint venture that dominated the headlines last week. The yet-to-be approved Clearwire-Sprint JV, backed by Intel (NSDQ: INTC), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and a handful of cable operators, expects to deliver around 6 mbps to 140 million people by the end of 2010.

De la Vega’s comments were likely a reaction to Clearwire and Sprint’s claims that they will be the first to roll out 4G in the U.S., and will be two years ahead of the competition. AT&T, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and T-Mobile have all chosen to use LTE, a technology that hasn’t even been standardized yet. But AT&T is essentially arguing that it doesn’t matter—through simple software upgrades, it can have much faster speeds than Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). “It’s clear to us, we are in the early stages of the wireless data revolution, and there are significant opportunities ahead as we ramp up,” de la Vega said. “Through interim steps, we can deliver more speeds everyday. It’s a promising time for the business, and we have a strong record of executing, and we have a strong spectrum position that gives us a great foundation for delivering…We are in a new age—as I call it, a great age—of wireless. It is just ahead of us and we are positioned to lead.”