Sprint will deploy HD voice nationwide in July
During last week’s Oracle Industry Connect conference, keynote speaker and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that the nation’s third largest carrier will be ready to deploy HD voice nationwide by July. If true, HD voice will finally enjoy more widespread availability, more than two years after the feature was originally announced, alongside the launch of the HTC EVO 4G LTE in May 2012.
Technically speaking, HD voice increases the clarity of voice calls across seven octaves, instead of the four octaves that many current smartphones support. Carriers of course have to support this on their towers, which is the cause of the hold up in the case of Sprint. Currently, the service is only available in a very select few markets.
According to Hesse, voice is the “killer app” – which is surprising, since most telecommunications happen over short message services like SMS or WhatsApp, and over data. While more carriers move away from voice and towards data-centric plans, Sprint risks irrelevance, as it focuses more of its energy on voice amidst a very slow LTE deployment.
In any case, HD voice is better than nothing at all. Any of you excited about this?
[Light Reading via Phandroid]
