I was lucky enough to be invited over to 3UK's head office in Maidenhead to trial HD Voice for mobile calls. What is HD voice one might ask? Well the simple answer without getting too technical is it's a significant improvement in sound over the normal quality calls we experience currently.
HD voice uses a wideband speed codec to capture more sound than narrowband codecs giving a much clearer and natural sound. Imagine watching a movie through your normal TV speakers and then watching it in Dolby surround, that is pretty much the difference between the two. Upon hearing it, it's fair to say, normal voice calls now sound very poor. Much like HD TV one should experience it to hear just how much of an improvement it is. So what would one need to experience HD voice calls? The good news is that the network is in place so the only wait really is for handsets which are HD capable to become mass market and 3 UK to go ahead with their plans. I've been told that HD calls should not cost more than the usual voice rates.
3UK are aiming to make this service available hopefully this year.
The HD voice is only a part of the overall network improvements 3 has been undergoing recently, and during this they have now reached what looks like a very significant milestone. 3UK activated its 10,000th 3G site this week, the final one being in Shooters Hill, South East London. This is 2000 more than their nearest competitor! 3UK expects to achieve 13,000 sites this year making being a 3 user a much more pleasant experience.
The news doesn't stop there. 3 has also been working on replacing older equipment with newer and increasing the capacity to 7.2Mbps. This is in conjunction with it's long term plans to eventually achieve 14.4Mbps and deploy LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology which should make all calls much better in quality, even those without HD handsets. They may be the smallest network in the UK, but they seem to understand where mobile usage is going and the future is definitely NOT Orange, it's HD.
That is pretty much what was covered in a casual chat amongst 3 representatives, journalists and one internet blogger.
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