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Can you hear me, can you hear me calling?
Orange UK has announced plans to launch high definition voice services in 2010. HD Voice calls will be carried on its 3G network using improved speech encoding, allowing customers to experience better voice call quality.
 How does it work? All radio communications broadcast most of the sound we hear, but not quite all of it. In this picture of a sound wave the area between the red lines is the bit that’s being sent, the very low or high pitched sounds at the top and bottom are cut out. Mainly this is because these sounds are virtually beyond human hearing, but it’s also done to limit the energy used and standardise the signal.
HD voice will send a little bit more over the air, in theory providing better quality sound.
The same idea was used to sell EFR (Enhanced Full Rate) phones at the end of the 90’s. It made more of a difference at the time because Cellnet and Vodafone were still using an analogue signal across most of the UK, but today the perceivable difference will be trivial.
I find it hard to see a great deal of value to HD Voice. Promises such as ‘crystal clear’ or ‘superior’ sound are nice for a sales agent to add positive-sounding blather to their pitch, but do they really add any value from a customer perspective? Of course not, call quality is already very high and public demand is for faster 3G video and data products, not voice.
It is interesting though, as once Orange start to move call traffic from 2G to 3G, it can think about dumping the 2G network entirely. Very soon the combined Orange/T-Mobile monster will have far more 2G network capacity than anyone needs, so we could see premier 3G only and budget 2G voice and text plans from the new company.
Anyway, the press release boldly proclaims HD Voice to ‘herald a new era for mobile communications’. Baloney! Orange need to offer improved services and allowances customers actually want instead of marketing 3G with platitudes.
Like to know more? press release here
Blond ambition?
As the physical and digital words become ever more closely meshed together, here’s an interesting concept video from Nokia’s mixed reality experience team. It demonstrates the potential use of near-eye display glasses, gaze tracking and a haptic wristband for gesture control (a bit like a Wii controller).
On the other hand, mixed reality might have a shadowy undertone. Do you think the actress starts to look a bit uncomfortable by the time she gets her third message? I can imagine her regretting the sign up to unlimited partner tracking.
4G Viking expansion
 This week Scandinavian giant TeliaSonera launched the worlds first publicly available 4G in Norway and Sweden. For now, capital dwellers in Oslo and Stockholm have to manually swap Samsung dongles to switch up to 4G, but TS are promising free upgrades to early adopters when dual devices come out.
Ericsson is supplying the infrastructure in Stockholm, while China-based Huawei does the job in Oslo. Finland (original home of the Sonera bit) will get the next 4G boost in 2010, for a pilot group of customers.
It’s no coincidence that mobile chip maker ST Ericsson demoed 3G/4G compatible kit this week, but it will probably take a couple of months for somebody to fully adopt it and to start selling multimode dongles.
Theoretical speeds of up to 100Mbps are possible with this implementation of 4G and running at least ten times faster than current 3G should be comfortable reality. Benchmark testing over the week from Engadget showed the Ericsson version in Stockholm to be running at about 40Mbps for downloading and 5Mbps when uploading.
 Apple (and others) take a bite out of Microsoft
FierceDeveloper, a web site for mobile application developers has published statistics from comScore, a market research pundit. The stats purport to show market share, but really show current users in a market increasing over time.
Engadget ran the story this morning, and forecast WinMo losing out further as Android-powered and Palm devices are available in the new year.
I have colleagues who are raving fans of Windows Mobile, but their turn to get excited about a new version could still be a year away.
Eco phones
 Environmental stories are big news this week as the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen draws to an end. Sony Ericsson boosts its GreenHeart portfolio by announcing the Hazel and Elm models, due to arrive in the new year.
SE GreenHeart phones include features designed to minimise carbon footprint in production, travel and use. Made with at least 50% recycled plastic, water-based paint and reduced packaging, they also come with reduced energy chargers that remind users to unplug them from the socket after use.
The Hazel slider and Elm candy bar both have pedometers, 5 MP cameras, GPS with geotagging and improved sound filters for outdoor use. They also feature the recycled look and feel of pretty much every other Sony Ericsson.
People can’t work stuff = opportunity
Virgin group launch their first UK venture for three years, a partnership with Sutherland Global Services to help consumers get more from their PC’s, broadband and phones.
Digital Help is available via a PC application or over the phone with an off-shore operator. Scans and general advice, plus a few services such as anti-virus software are available for free, but most problem resolution will need a £2.99 subscription to be paid first. Home visits can also be arranged, but the cost can be in excess of £90 for an hour. The dummies guide to ‘connecting things with stuff’ market has a few competitors already. Similar services are available from Tech Guys, Geek Squad and Gadget Helpline, sometimes bundled with mobile offers.
Yesterday a friend who works in third-line tech support had to deal with a torrent of abuse from a customer requesting support for a third-party application on an old HTC device. Nobody had advertised or implied compatibility of the app with the phone, but operator, app supplier and manufacturer were all trying to help - for free. It was taking time, but the customer refused to wait for 72 hours for a reply. Three days would be ridiculous for a standard query, but is it unreasonable when supporting a two year old device with a new application?
Customers get a great deal of value from service representatives, usually at no charge. I hope the cost of independent technical support will nudge them towards showing a little more patience and understanding when queries are complex or unusual.
…except in broadband. D’oh!
 Ofcom this week provided a snapshot of digital take up in 12 major economies, plus the rapidly expanding markets of Brazil, India, Russia and China. It ranks UK customers as third in the world for time spent chatting on the phone and second for texting.
Headline mobile figures that are really useful for us include the facts that UK customers made, on average, 152 minutes of outbound calls and sent only 93 texts. When you remember these are averages and many consumers will be using much less, why are so many unlimited texting offers glutting the market? Could it be they sound great and cost virtually nothing for operators to provide? American consumers text more than anyone else, but still only average out at 264 per month.
A lot of the ‘digital’ in the report is all about TV switchover from analogue, which has been very high in the UK so coach-potato elite status is fair to claim. More important to us is the mixed situation regarding broadband products. The good news is that fierce competition continues to mean the UK has the lowest prices for mobile broadband, of all comparable countries. More concerning is the fact that only 10% of fixed line services will run at 8Mbits/second or faster. This lags behind Germany, France, Sweden and The Netherlands.
Like to know more? report here
Branded hub for social networkers
 Virgin Media become the latest provider to attempt to lasso all your social networking needs and coral them within its own brand application, according to Mobile News. Get Social is their new product, and it follows follows the same approach as Vodafone’s heavily advertised 360 service by collecting community information in one place. Get Social wrangles from Twitter, facebook, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and virginmedia.com.
The service is launching on two Nokia (5800 and 5530), and two Sony Ericsson (W595 and K770i) handsets to start, with more to follow in the New Year.
Social networkers bounce around to find a home, but once established they develop an extremely strong brand attachment. Handset makers and networks alike all want a piece of this action, so will claim to integrate feeds ‘easily’. Its a great plan, but can come with headaches - Synching contacts from rival applications felt just that bit too fiddly for me on 360, so I hope Virgin will make it easier.
Androids march continues
Acer is a Taiwanese manufacturer that recently overtook Dell to become the world’s second-largest seller of PC’s (behind Hewlett-Packard). CEO Gianfranco Lanci has the stated goal of being one of the top five smartphone suppliers by 2014.
 In early 2009 Acer jumped into the mobile market with a phone range running Windows Mobile. 2010 is setting up to be a year of the Androids for it, with the flowing-line Acer Liquid just out in the UK, and up to 6 more to appear across European and Asian markets in the first half of the new year.
The Liquid runs Android 1.6 and is a touchscreen phone powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor. It’s been under-clocked (made to run a little slower) to about 800MHz to improve battery life.
I’ve hung back on posting any preview or unboxing clips of the Liquid, because the videos I can find are way too long, or are just shabby – When a good one becomes available, I’ll be sure to post it up.
Acer’s first Android looks to lay a solid foundation, but I’d expect its 2nd and 3rd Android offerings to really begin to differentiate if it wants to claim one of the vaunted top five seats.
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How does it work? All radio communications broadcast most of the sound we hear, but not quite all of it. In this picture of a sound wave the area between the red lines is the bit that’s being sent, the very low or high pitched sounds at the top and bottom are cut out. Mainly this is because these sounds are virtually beyond human hearing, but it’s also done to limit the energy used and standardise the signal.
