Orange, a UK mobile phone carrier, has debuted a new high-definition phone service called HD Voice. Although the service requires that you purchase a new mobile phone, the calls themselves don’t use any hardware not already present in most phones. Orange has made HD Voice an open standard in the UK. I hope that something similar follows in the states.
I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for years. If you’ve ever owned a mobile phone with a memo recording feature, then you know that the clarity of the phone calls we make has nothing to do with the hardware in our devices and everything to do with the amount of bandwidth that our carriers are willing to expend on voice calls. We’ve had mobile phones for decades without any appreciable improvement in sound quality.