The genesis of High Definition (HD) and its ability to capture, transmit, and store multimedia content with incredible levels of detail has transformed the way we consume digital media content. In the context of telecommunication, the pertinence of HD has been extended to voice communication in the recent years. This introduction of HD into voice takes the call audio quality to a whole new level and makes the callers feel as if they are taking to each other in person.

Martyn Davies, Principal Consultant at Dialogic, speaks on the adoption of HD voice at the recently held eComm conference in Amsterdam. As the popular discussion on HD voice has always revolved around VoIP service providers like Skype, Cisco and Microsoft, Martin explains how HD-enabling of voice is also possible in legacy mobile networks, despite their inherent bandwidth limitations.

The legacy narrowband audio codec G.711 used in the mobile networks is limited to around 4khz pass band. This bandwidth accommodates around 80% of the human voice energy and hence generally considered good enough for reasonable voice quality. It, however, makes it often difficult to suppress white noise and distinguish similar sounding words spoken by the callers. The wideband codec G.722 (also known as Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband or AMR-WB), on the other hand, makes it possible to increase this bandwidth to 7khz in the same channel.

Taking wideband voice into commercial use requires technological upgrades in both mobile handsets and networks. Orange U.K has already partnered with several handset vendors like Nokia and has become the first operator in the world to introduce HD voice services.  Martin talks about this evolution of HD voice in mobile networks and discusses the various technological challenges that are being overcome to encourage its widespread adoption.