Credit to Dan Berninger for the pointer
The UK is close to being a hotbed for mobile HD voice, if reports are to be believed, and there may be a big mobile HD voice announcement in February.
Techeye was invited by upstart cellular carrier 3 to get a demo for mobile HD voice. Sound quality is descirbed as “the person you’re talking to sounds like they’re four feet away,” but Techeye suggests the demo would have been more impressive on better handsets with a “decent” microphone and loudspeaker; the demo was conducted on “modified Sony Ericsson Cybershot jobbies.”
According to Techeye, 3 UK has upgraded its backhaul network with Nokia Siemens gear so it is now capable of fully supporting AMR-WB (or WB-AMR as they tend to call it in Europe).
Further, an announcement from a mobile HD voice “special interest group” is expected at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in February and the news is expected to include a way to interconnect HD voice ready networks.
[...] for now. The analyst report also confirms an earlier report that mobile operators will make a HD voice interoperabilty announcement at Mobile World [...]
[...] kicks off in Barcelona on February 15. Other European carriers are expected to announce their mobile HD voice plans during MWC, and a mobile HD voice (i.e. AMR-WB) interoperability/peering coalition announcement [...]