Mobile HD voice service is snowballing in Europe, rolling downhill and picking up steam and mass.   Most, if not all, of Europe will have HD voice service from at least once carrier by the end of the year. More competitive markets, such as France and the UK, will have two or more carriers.

France Telecom (News - Alert) formed the mobile HD voice snowball and started it down the hill in 2009, first in smaller markets and then moving to large deployments in the United Kingdom and France. It’s a pretty good bet if you are an Orange customer in any country, you either should already have HD voice or are on the short list to get HD voice in conjunction with a 3G/LTE-ready upgrade.

But France Telecom is no longer the whole story – a major part yes, including a strategic relationship with Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert) that I’ll talk about in the moment. Other carriers are adding mobile HD voice support as well.  SFR, the number 2 mobile carrier in France, is providing HD voice service. Telekom Austria (News - Alert) has introduced HD voice in its home territory and Serbia while Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) opened up HD voice last month.

Vodafone is now trialing HD voice in Turkey. If it follows the path of Orange, you’ll see HD voice show up in more Vodafone territories by the end of the year. There are unconfirmed reports ERA/T-Mobile Poland has turned up HD voice service in Poland, but ERA definitely signaled earlier this year it planned to support HD voice in conjunction with its network upgrades.

Which brings us to the big piece of the puzzle, Deutsche Telekom (DT)and its’ T-Mobile subsidiaries across Europe – along with that working relationship with France Telecom. At least a portion of the T-Mobile Netherlands network is capable of supporting HD voice; a pair of German university students wants to test some DARPA voice processing software in a research project and were directed to The Hague; T-Mobile supplied a pair of AMR-WB Nokia phones in support.

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have agreed to share radio access networks and jointly buy gear. The two companies already starting to share a cellular network in the UK and since Orange mobile HD voice, it follows that DT will end up supporting HD voice by the end of the year.

Ironically, the only “gap” in HD voice deployments appears to be in the Scandinavian states. Finland-based Nokia was the first handset manufacturer to roll the AMR-WB HD voice codec into its phones while Swedish-based Ericsson (News - Alert) has played a key role in promoting HD voice deployments. But there have been no announcements from carriers in those respective countries, leaving France Telecom to claim thought leadership on the carrier side.

Want to know more about HD voice’s proliferation around the world? TMC (News - Alert) and I have published a report, “HD Voice 2011: Critical Mass.” You can find it at http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/ip-communications/

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.