LAS VEGAS -- US leading chip producer Qualcomm and China's telecommunication company ZTE announced during the 2020 Customer Electronics Show (CES) kicked off Monday that they together had achieved 5G-enabled Voice over New Radio (VoNR) call.

The latest innovation, which will allow operators to deliver high-quality voice service without having to rely on voice over 4G LTE, is an important step in the global mobile industry's evolution from non-standalone to standalone (SA), in other words, without needing to use an anchor 4G network.

"This achievement with ZTE allows us to further support our goal of unlocking 5G's ability to power worldwide connectivity capabilities," said Durga Malladi, senior vice-president and general manager of Qualcomm.

Bai Yanmin, general manager of ZTE was quoted as saying that this successful 5G VoNR call marked "an important step towards the commercial use of seamless native 5G voice experience, and would also strongly support the construction of 5G SA, so as to offer 5G to more service providers, enterprise users and consumers."

It is the latest achievement of the two companies' cooperation in the field of 5G technology.

They produced the world's first end-to-end 5G NR Interoperability Data Testing system, demonstrating a data connection based on 3GPP R15 standard -- the first full set of 5G standards in November 2017, and completed a live demonstration of 5G network services based on an end-to-end sub-6GHz commercial system in February 2019, which helped provide wide coverage and ensure the consistent high speeds of the network.

Moreover, Qualcomm and ZTE completed the first 5G mobile phone millimeter-wave interoperability test in the United States recently.

"As a long-term partner of ZTE, Qualcomm is working with us to promote technical verification and commercialization in the 5G development process," added Bai.