Orange UK Announces Trial of Mobile HD Voice

Today, wireless carrier Orange UK announced the kickoff of High Definition (HD) Voice trial on its UK mobile network in the South of England. According to the company, HD Voice is expected to provide crystal clear, superior sound quality to Orange's customers, while opening the gates to a new era in mobile communications. The service is set to cut all distance issues through making the sound as clear as if the users were in the same room.

Effective immediately, the trial will run on Orange UK's mobile network linking Bristol, Reading and Southampton. The participants to the trial have been selected to represent various demographic groups, such as small businesses and early technology adopters, along with mainstream users. The carrier should monitor the levels of call quality and the customer experience, and announced that, in case the trial proves successful, the service should roll out all over the country before the end of the summer.

“The trial of mobile HD Voice is a significant milestone in the new company’s goal of delivering the best service in the industry. HD Voice represents a huge advance for the customer experience, a great leap forward for the mobile industry and we’re delighted to be at the forefront in bringing this innovation to the UK public,” Tom Alexander, Chief Executive of Everything Everywhere, the company, which runs Orange UK.

Orange has become the first wireless carrier in the world to offer this service when it launched it in Moldova, and the UK trial is based on the success it registered there. According to the firm, HD Voice offers great sound quality enhancements over traditional mobile voice calls, mainly due to a wider speech bandwidth (50–7000 Hz) when compared to the current arrow one (300–3400 Hz). At the same time, the giant notes that HD Voice uses the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec, capable of providing great increases in sound quality on the same network resources.

Additional details on the nationwide rollout of HD Voice on Orange's network in the UK should emerge later during the ongoing year.