Forget about the recent advances made in the areas of delivering high speed internet access to your mobile phone for a second. Most people use their handset for the same reason phones were invented over a century ago, to have a conversation. Improvements to call quality has been fairly minor over the past few years, and yet most people can appreciate the difference of using a land line versus the device they carry in their pocket. This was supposed to change last year when operators in various European countries started rolling out HD Voice support on their GSM networks, but a limited amount of supported handsets has made the technology a bit niche to say the least. Ericsson has just announced that they’ve brought HD Voice support to the other 20% of cellular networks around the world that use CDMA technology. Whereas a typical voice call only transmits sounds in the 300 Hz to 3400 Hz range, HD Voice over CDMA can handle 50 Hz to 7000 Hz thanks to a new Enhanced Variable Rate Codec Narrowband-Wideband (EVRC-NW) codec.
All of this sounds great (no pun intended), but there are no plans, at least not yet, to stick this technology inside a mobile phone. America’s largest operator, Verizon, has already announced plans to support voice calls over LTE and when they switch that on then it would make sense to roll out HD Voice over that technology since it naturally provides more bandwidth. In a few years time we wouldn’t be surprised to hear about both Verizon and Sprint, the two largest CDMA operators in America, eventually transitioning away from CDMA thanks to the glut of cheap LTE handsets hitting the market.
What say you? If your operator offered higher quality voice calls would you call your mother, wife, and mistress more often, or are you going to stick to plain old SMS/email?