AppleInsider Staff
At the VentureBeat Mobile Summit in Sausalito, Calif., on Monday, AT&T Senior Vice President Kris Rinne announced that the second-largest U.S. carrier will roll out support for HD Voice over its 4G LTE network sometime this year.
Rinne, who is in charge of network technologies at AT&T, said wideband audio, better known as HD Voice, will see deployment as the telecom moves voice calling over to its LTE network, reports AllThingsD. Apple's iPhone 5 boasts hardware capable of delivering the high-quality audio, but in order to work, telecoms must also support the protocol.
“HD Voice is part of our voice over LTE strategy,†Rinne said.
AT&T has been derided for its sub-par performance regarding the audio quality of its phone calls, with one informal test finding Sprint to have the best sound compared to AT&T and Verizon. As the "Big Four" U.S. carriers slowly move to next-generation wireless technologies, the networks' selling points appear to be moving from less dropped calls and signal strength to fastest data speeds and best sounding voice calls.
T-Mobile announced less than one week ago that it will be the first U.S. carrier to support the high-fidelity communications technology when it finally launches the iPhone 5 on April 12. Sprint has also sounded off about its own HD Voice offering, but the service has yet to materialize.
Christine McKee
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21 Comments
This would be great... IF THERE WAS ANY F---ING WAY TO MAKE A G.D. PHONE CALL ON THE AT&T NETWORK
i think what we need is the end of talk minutes and the end of text messages. EVERYTHING should simply be through LTE.... LONG TERM EVOLUTION, BABY!!!! All the plans could be simplified so much...
Isn't that exactly what T-Mobile did? unlimited Talk, Text and 3G Data. You just pay for the 4G data rate (and even then, if you go over, no biggie)
The headline is wrong. AT&T won't be offering HD voice iPhone 5, but rather iPhone 5S
Well, from the sounds of things it seems like HD voice is more an issue of moving voice from 3G+ or HSDPA to voice over IP, e.g, LTE. The IPhone 5 should be able to do HD Voice already....I dont think the statement by ATT is incorrect...