Orange Launches HD Voice Call Service

Orange is touting the “biggest advance in voice calls in twenty years” after it became the first UK mobile operator to launch a high definition (HD) voice service for mobile phones.

However, the HD voice service is only currently available for business users and not consumers.

[Update: Orange has been in touch with eWEEK Europe to confirm that its HD voice service is also available for consumers.]

Orange claims that the HD service will deliver “crystal clear” conversations on the move and in noisy environments. The company says that HD calls will have increased clarity and will filter out most background noise.

Call Quality

Orange cited recent research (conducted by Redshift in August this year) among 1,000 business owners, which found that 75 percent of business owners consider clear call quality to be the most important functionality of their mobile device. Meanwhile, 33 percent of business owners admitted they constantly struggle to hold phone conversations because of noisy environments.

In order to benefit from Orange’s HD Voice service, a 3G network is required. Orange says that the service uses the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec which 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.”

Orange also claims that the WB-AMR is able to deliver enhanced sound quality but uses the same network resources. This is an important point, as operators have admitted in the past they are struggling with the increasing data strain posed by the uptake of smartphones, and will be cautious of rolling out new services that place further strain on their network or require costly network upgrades.

What is certain, however, is that HD Voice will only be available initially on a few selected handsets, namely the Nokia E5 and the Samsung Omnia Pro 5230 handsets. However, the operator has promised more HD enabled handsets to follow.

Background Noise

“HD Voice is going to change the way businesses are able to communicate through our mobiles from conducting calls in places that were not previously possible to the ability to hear emotions in people’s voices,” said Martin Stiven, VP of Business at Everything Everywhere, the owner of Orange UK.

“We’re about bringing people closer together and HD Voice does just that, making business colleagues feel as if they’re speaking face to face,” he added. “People are going to love the clarity of calls and the lack of background noise. Once you’ve used it, you will want to keep it.”

Hear the Emotion

Orange says that its HD Voice for businesses will also eliminate any perceived distance between callers, thereby “making it easier to hear the emotions in people’s voices.” Again it pointed to its research, which found that 80 percent of business owners state that it is very important to hear people’s emotions when conducting a conversation. Apparently, almost one in five (18 percent) admitted that they had lost a deal because of a misunderstanding over the phone as they couldn’t hear what was being said.

Orange also believes that HD Voice offers other opportunities other than for those business users operating in industries with a lot of background noise. It pointed to a possible use in the broadcasting sector, as interviews or breaking news reports could instead be done over the phone. The BBC is apparently trialling the solution as a low cost alternative to the traditional methods of live contribution for both its reporters and potentially for guests.

The arrival of Orange’s HD Voice for Business comes at a time when there is speculation that more and more people are using their mobile phones for “fire and forget messaging”, (such as IM, emails, SMS etc) rather than voice calls.