Orange begins UK high-definition voice trials

Orange will experiment with high-definition voice calls in Bristol, Reading and Southampton

Orange is to trial high-definition voice calls on its network in the south of England in a bid to offer improved call quality.

The trial will take place in Bristol, Reading and Southampton for a select number of consumers and small businesses.

Orange claimed that the system eliminates the distortion of long-distance calls, which will sound as if they being made from the next room.

Tom Alexander, chief executive of Everything Everywhere, the parent company of the recently merged Orange and T-Mobile, argued that the trial is a "significant milestone" in the company's goal of delivering the best service in the industry.

"High-definition voice represents a huge advance for the customer experience, and a great leap forward for the mobile industry. We are delighted to be at the forefront in bringing this innovation to the UK public," he said.

A nationwide roll-out of the service will take place before the end of the summer, Orange said.

The technology works by using a wider speech bandwidth of 50Hz to 7,000Hz, compared to the current 300Hz to 3,400Hz.

The system then uses the Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate speech codec to deliver enhanced sound quality on the same network resources.

Orange announced the trial in February, and ran a similar trial in Moldova earlier this year.