Mobile call quality lagging behind hardware innovations

The mobile phone market is rapidly innovating and proliferating throughout the world. Feature-phone (dumbphones) are continually adding new and exciting features to keep users interested and the consuming public buying. And smartphones are now shipping with once rare and high-end features, like 3G data, WiFi, touchscreens, and massive internal storage, throughout the handset spectrum. Even mid-range handsets can surf the wireless web at 3G speeds and some even feature touchscreens.

So, with all this innovation and technology down-shifts going on in the mobile space, has call-quality improved accordingly? According to a recent study from  Ditech Networks, call-quality is seriously lagging behind tech-advancements the world over. In Europe and the US, 23% of wireless calls fail to meet the “industry minimum standard for voice quality.” When we consider wireless calls on a global basis, a full 40% fall below that minimum standard – making it more of an average standard than anything else.

Call-quality issues like “ambient noise,” “acoustic echo” and “voice level mismatch” make voice-calls the least technologically advanced features on mobile phones these days. While we surf the web at high-speed and interact with email, SMS text message, and social networks on the road, it seems carriers have started to forget that voice calls are their primary business.

Still, if carriers like Sprint can pull-off redefining their business as a data-provider (with voice calls routed over a data network), then voice quality may be relegated less and less priority. But, it sure would be nice to have high-quality, reliable voice calls every now and again.

[Via: RawFeed]