Crackly calls and dropped connections will be a thing of the past next year, as Orange plans to roll out HD voice technology, boosting quality across its network as early as 2009.
According to Pocket Lint, the mobile provider will vastly improve the quality of voice calls using the Adaptive Multi Rate-WideBand (AMR-WB) codec.
It’ll bring calls to “near hi-fi” quality, or “FM-radio quality” and on first impressions, Pocket Lint’s Chris Hall reckons it’s the real deal. “It did seem much more life-like,” he says.
But the bad news is you’ll need a mobile handset that’s capable of translating the new codec, as well as talking to someone who also has a HD-capable phone to get the very best results, although you should see a slight improvement if only one person has a HD blower.
Orange says it’ll launch HD voice in Q3 2009, and the best news is it’ll come to the UK first.
Out 2009 | TBC | Orange (via Pocket Lint)
