Excitement is booming since AT&T has officially said it will roll out HD voice on its LTE network this year, with confirmation offered by a senior executive at a mobile event. Nobody's asking why it has taken AT&T so long and why the company hasn't committed to support HD voice on its "legacy" GSM/HSPA network, like those poor guys at T-Mobile (News - Alert) USA did in January.
If I sound cynical and annoyed, it's because U.S. mobile carriers have -- and there's no polite way to put it -- sucked when it comes to delivering better voice quality when compared to the rest of the world. Mark the industry as an epic #Fail for rolling out and promoting HD voice up until T-Mobile USA's introduction of the service in January.
HD voice first arrived back in 2009, with France Telecom (News - Alert)/Orange turning it up in Moldova. Since then, you can find better voice quality on more than 50 networks in over 40 countries; it's hard to give an exact count because of recent turn ups in Asia and the Middle East, but consider the following points:
o All four major carriers in Canada have been offering HD voice since last year, with more than 90 percent of the mobile population having access to the service through these carriers.
o Kenya has two mobile carriers offering HD voice today. France has three out of four major carriers.
o Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines all have carriers offering HD voice today in Asia. You can get HD voice on Megafon's network in Siberia. Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are among the countries in the Middle East that have HD voice service.
o The three largest South Korea mobile carriers all offer VoLTE today.
In the U.S., Sprint promised HD voice last year over its CDMA network, with network turn up expected in late 2012. Now, the carrier says it will launch the service in the next few months, on a market-by-market basis, according to a company spokeswoman -- over a year after its initial marketing push to sell more HTC (News - Alert) EVO 4G LTE handsets, which featured HD voice.
Can you say "Déjà vu WiMAX?"
AT&T could have delivered HD voice over its existing "legacy" network years ago with a simple firmware and software upgrade, just like T-Mobile quietly managed this December before announcing the service in January at International CES (News - Alert) 2013. It is likely the carrier won't offer HD voice on its existing GSM/HSPA network because it plans to ultimately shut it down and refarm the spectrum for LTE, giving customers yet another reason to migrate to LTE sooner rather than later.
Verizon Wireless (News - Alert) had planned to be the first carrier to deliver HD voice over VoLTE in the U.S. by 2012, but is now looking at later this year or early 2014 -- and the fuzzy date should make you wonder why the company continues to have difficulties in bringing VoLTE into production.
You may want to wonder what the U.S. might look like if AT&T had managed to buy T-Mobile USA. I suspect HD voice wouldn't have been a priority if the acquisition had gone through.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey