Orange is ready for HD voice

TELECOM NETWORK OPERATOR Orange is going with what it calls high definition or HD voice, with a roll-out of services that it will trial in the south of England.

Orange claims that HD services will provide a much clearer connection between users with superior sound quality. Naturally, the company also boasts it is a "new era for mobile communications", though it stopped short of the full monty hyperbole of calling it a game changer.

Bristol, Reading and Southampton have signed up for the HD service. Orange sprinkled the testers with representative demographics from businesses, early adopters and ordinary Joe Punter users.

Apparently, these groups will be hooked up and monitored by Orange market-research scientists to check on customer experience. If they like it, there's no doubt it'll be rolled out elsewhere.

"The trial of mobile HD Voice is a significant milestone in the new company's goal of delivering the best service in the industry," said Tom Alexander, CEO of Everything Everywhere, the company that runs Orange UK.

Alexander continued, "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."

Orange wants to pump 50-7,000Hz of HD bandwidth into your lugholes which is way wider than the traditional 300-3,400Hz frequency range. It says this will use a wideband adaptive multi-rate codec to improve sound.

What Orange hasn't said is what hardware it will use to pump the HD experience. The company claims the increased HD signal will not impact current network resources but didn't say what mobiles will be used in the trial. µ