Categories: Mobility

Orange Touts High Definition Voice Quality

Orange is looking to snag bragging rights for the year ahead after it announced “mobile High Definition (HD) Voice” for its customers.

Orange hopes its decision will improve the overall user experience of its network, promising “crystal clear, superior sound quality.”

The news comes at a time when the boss of O2 had to apologise for the problems with the O2 network in London, which it blamed on the increasing use of smartphones, such as the iPhone.

Orange could not resist the opportunity to boast about its network infrastructure, saying it currently provides high speed 3G coverage to more than 93 percent of the UK’s population – more than any other UK operator.

Orange’s HD Voice will apparently use the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec.

“This provides excellent audio quality due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50-7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300-3400 Hz,” said the operator. “The WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) delivers significantly enhanced sound quality whilst utilising the same network resources.”

“Orange is proud to be leading the industry into the next decade by announcing a new standard in voice innovation that will transform the mobile experience for customers in the UK,” said Tom Alexander, CEO of Orange UK.

“HD Voice really does inject a level of innovation into mobile phone calls, making it sound as if callers are actually in the same room,” he added. “Once people have tried it, they won’t want to go back.”

Orange said that UK trials will be announced early in the new year, with full nationwide roll-out due later in 2010.

It should be noted however that Orange customers will require a HD Voice enabled handset, and the operator said it is already working with leading handset manufacturers on the development of devices to be rolled out next year.

Tom Jowitt

Tom Jowitt is a leading British tech freelancer and long standing contributor to Silicon UK. He is also a bit of a Lord of the Rings nut...

Recent Posts

Apple, Google Mobile Ecosystems Should Be Investigated, CMA Told

CMA receives 'provisional recommendation' from independent inquiry that Apple,Google mobile ecosystem needs investigation

15 hours ago

Australia Rejects Elon Musk Claim About Social Media Ban For Under-16s

Government minister flatly rejects Elon Musk's “unsurprising” allegation that Australian government seeks control of Internet…

18 hours ago

Northvolt Files For Bankruptcy Protection In US

Northvolt files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, and CEO and co-founder…

19 hours ago

UK’s CMA Readies Cloud Sector “Behavioural” Remedies – Report

Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector

1 day ago

Former Policy Boss At X, Nick Pickles, Joins Sam Altman Venture

Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…

2 days ago

Bitcoin Rises Above $96,000 Amid Trump Optimism

Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…

2 days ago