6 Sep
Orange ‘HD Voice Call’ Goes Live
Posted on 2010 under HD voice calling, Mobile Networks, Mobile News, Orange | Comments are offAs of last week, have been rolling out their new HD Voice service, which was first tested in Moldova almost year ago on 09/09/09. It was said back then that Orange would be launching the service around Europe in ‘late 2010′ and bang on schedule, Orange have announced that the roll out of the service across the UK will be beginning today; the first day of the last quarter of 2010.
What exactly are HD Voice calls? Well, technically speaking the HD Voice calls are the product of the new Adaptive Multi Rate - Wide Band (AMR-WB) codec which takes advantage of a greater bandwidth made available by a 3G network. In laymens terms, HD Voice calls are essentially higher quality calls that sounds crisper and are naturally better at filtering out background noise. The easiest way to demonstrate the difference between current voice and HD Voice would be to compare to FM Radio and DAB Radio, admittedly the technologies are quite different, but the end effect is pretty similar in that there is quite clearly an audible difference between the two.
Now, before you start dialing your mate to test the new HD Voice calling there is one (quite large) proviso, it only works on a handful of handsets currently (the handsets listed by Orange are the Nokia , and as well as the ) and what’s worse, current owners will not be getting a software update to allow the HD Voice calling despite the fact that no extra hardware is involved. Orange have really dangled it out there on a stick, tempting all of their customers and then proceeding to move it just out of reach, unless they’re willing to buy a new phone. Whether or not Orange choose to change their stance on this remains to be seen and we hope they do, they’re potentially sitting on a revolutionary technology here and undoubtedly other networks will be hot on their heels. (Source: Via )