Vodacom launches ‘super HD’ voice calling

Vodacom said on Thursday it is working with device manufacturers to introduce enhanced voice services — known as super high-definition (SHD) voice or HD Voice+, on its network in South Africa.

The new voice technology utilises voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) to enhance voice quality using the EVS codec, the company said.

Vodacom launched VoLTE three years ago.

HD Voice+ is the successor of the current HD voice codec called AMR-WB, or adaptive multi-rate wideband.

The new technology can deliver speech quality that matches other audio sources such as hi-fidelity stored music and is designed to offer up to 20kHz of audio bandwidth (CD quality), Vodacom said.

The technology “has been shown to provide coverage gains for cell-edge users, which will translate in better voice quality performance in cell-edge conditions, namely where coverage might not be optimal”.

“VoLTE, without enhanced voice services, offers more than double the bandwidth available over 2G voice…,” it said.

“With the addition of enhanced voice services, the bandwidth is again increased, further improving speech quality…”  — (c) 2018 NewsCentral Media