Orange will accelerate its roll-out of mobile HD voice services in Europe. The carrier announced a commitment to deploy mobile HD voice in France, Spain and Luxembourg in 2010. It's first mobile HD voice market -- Moldova -- is already live and Orange has previously disclosed plans to implement the technology in the UK and Belgium in this year. A UK customer trial of mobile HD voice is expected to start from Spring and run for three months.
HD Voice uses the AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband) speech codec. Orange said this codec, this provides excellent audio quality due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50-7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300-3400 Hz.
"As far as Orange is concerned, voice is not just a commodity. With mobile HD voice, we are delivering true customer innovation - one that will genuinely enrich and transform our customers' lives. By being the first to innovate and deliver a new mobile voice experience, we provide a compelling and differentiated proposition which sets Orange apart. High-definition voice is the future standard for mobile communication," stated Olaf Swantee, senior executive vice president for Orange's global mobile business.
Orange plans to rapidly extend the range of HD voice-compatible mobile handsets across Europe. Pricing and handsets will be announced at the time of launch locally.
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- In September 2009, Orange became the world's first operator to commercially launch a mobile HD voice service in Moldova, announcing plans to bring mobile HD voice to the UK and Belgium in 2010. In addition to mobile HD voice, Orange was also the first operator to launch HD over VOIP, first in France and shortly to be rolled out to Poland and Spain.
