Last December, Orange UK promised trials of mobile High Definition (HD) voice services in early 2010. They might have slipped slightly past 'early in the new year' but that trial has now been confirmed.
The trial is running in the south of England between Bristol, Reading and Southampton. Orange says levels of call quality and customer experience will be monitored, with a nationwide roll-out planned by the end of the summer if the trial receives "successful feedback".
HD Voice offers an improvement in the sound quality of traditional mobile voice calls due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50Hz – 7000Hz compared to the current speech codec, which offers 300Hz – 3400Hz.