Orange UK is trialling its Mobile High Definition (HD) Voice service across the operator’s HSPA network in the South of England. A full nationwide roll-out of the service is planned before the end of September. Mobile HD Voice technology will offer a superior customer experience thanks to a wider speech bandwidth of 50–7000 Hz and the use of the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec, virtually eliminating the distance between callers by providing users with crystal clear calls. The UK trial follows the commercial launch of the service by Orange in Moldova.

Orange today announced a trial of High Definition (HD) Voice across its UK mobile network in the South of England.

With its crystal clear, superior sound quality, Orange’s introduction of HD Voice is set to herald a new era for mobile communications and a new standard for the telecoms industry. The service virtually eliminates the distance between callers so that it makes calls sound as if they’re in the same room. 

The trial, which commences immediately, runs across the Orange UK mobile network between the locations of Bristol, Reading and Southampton, with those participating, having been selected to represent a range of demographic groups, including small businesses and early technology adopters, as well as more mainstream users. Levels of call quality and customer experience will be monitored, and upon successful feedback from the trial, Orange plans to roll out the service nationwide across before the end of the summer.

Tom Alexander, Chief Executive of Everything Everywhere, the company which runs Orange UK, said: “The trial of mobile HD Voice is a significant milestone in the new company’s goal of delivering the best service in the industry. 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.”

The UK trial builds on the launch of service by Orange in Moldova, where it has become the first operator in the world to offer the service.  HD Voice offers an improvement in the sound quality of traditional mobile voice calls due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50–7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300–3400 Hz. HD Voice uses the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec to deliver significantly enhanced sound quality while utilising the same network resources.

Further details on the Orange HD Voice nationwide roll out will be made available later in 2010.

About Orange UK
Orange is the key brand of the France Telecom Group, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. With 183.3 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates.
In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population, and 3G coverage to more than 93%. At the end of March 2010, Orange had more than 17.31 million customers in the UK – 16.442 million active mobile customers and approximately 863,000 fixed line internet customers.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Brand Services Limited.
For more information please call the Orange Press Office 0870 3731500, or visit www.orange.co.uk/newsroom

Source: http://newsroom.orange.co.uk/2010/06/17/orange-uk-launches-mobile-hd-voice-trial/