I saw an interesting story on Engadget today, Orange introduces 'HD Voice' calls -- 3G, Moldovian citizenship required. The service is being provided by Orange Moldova. It is rather interesting and exciting to see such a new technology, the first of its kind (at least for the general population) be unveiled in a eastern European country.
Technical information from the site:
The science behind HD voice is the Adaptive Multi Rate - Wide Band (AMR-WB) codec, which is a new standardized speech codec for 3G mobile networks.
The staggering difference in quality for AMR-WB calls became possible due to doubled voice bandwidth: 50-700 Hz, compared to 300-3400 Hz, which is the usual bandwidth.
HD voice is possible only between AMR-WB compliant phones, everywhere only under Orange Moldova 3G+ coverage.
It seems that the only phone which supports this is the new, Orange Moldova-exclusive Nokia 6720. I'm not surprised that it is Nokia, given Nokia's popularity and record for adopting new technology.
HD calls for phones (or any HD for telecommunication for that matter!) is a very interesting application of high definition technology for telecommunications. I would be very interested to know how it works out, and how it is being adopted. Perhaps Orange (a French telecom company) would bring it to other European nations. And maybe one of the carriers here in the US would also adopt this technology.
However, I would be more excited to see the spread in adoption of video calling (my Nokia N97, and the N95 which I had prior) both support video calling, but I have yet to have been on a network which supports it, and I don't know anyone else who uses it.
So, to the telecoms out there: bring us HD voice and video calling, at good rates, with high adoption!
