Orange launch world's first HD voice over 3G… in Moldova

Apparently voice transmission is one of the few areas where GSM telephony hasn't seen any upgrades since the 1990's. Yesterday, on 09.09.2009 in 09:09h sharp, Orange picked Moldova for the birthplace of the first HD voice call.

The new HD voice standard as called by Orange is another way of naming the use of a better audio codec in the transmission of voice. The higher-quality encoding is only possible over the 3G/HSDPA network as it apparently uses a higher bandwidth. Orange Moldova have only recently upgraded their network to support 14.4 Mbps HSDPA so we guess that has something to do with it as well.

Orange also presented the first and reportedly, ONLY phone equipped to support high-definition audio - a version of Nokia 6720 classic. That special version of the handset supports the AMR-WB codec used for the encoding of the HD voice calls. The Nokia 6720 classic HD version is available only in Moldova's Orange shops for a price of around 260 euro.

Orange plans to expand their HD Voice service to other networks throughout Europe starting with the UK and Belgium - all set to go until the end of 2010. The range of HD-voice-capable phones should also be expanded until then.

Source