Orange (www.ft-orange.com) appears to be on pace with a UK deployment of mobile HD voice, based upon a surge of news out of the blogosphere triggered by a piece in Tech Radar (www.techradar.com).
Tech Radar reports Orange is trialing the service in Bristol, Reading and Southampton and will be “free” to Orange customers with compatible handsets. A demonstration in Orange’s Bristol store was performed using a pair of Nokia X6 handsets with “special software.”
Call quality in the demo was compared to DAB (digital audio) radio, with background noises filtered out.
A spokesperson for Orange said that HD Voice won’t be offered as an over-the-air upgrade to existing handsets “for the moment” – which begs the question as to which phones already in deployment might support HD voice in the future via a software upgrade.
Orange’s UK mobile HD voice service is expected to be generally available “later this summer.”
