Recently Orange announced the availability of Mobile HD Voice service in UK. This service will enable users to make HD quality audio calls. This service would be available to all orange customers having HD voice enabled handsets.HD Voice uses the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec. This provides excellent audio quality due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50–7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300–3400 Hz. The WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) delivers significantly enhanced sound quality whilst utilizing the same network resources.

Tom Alexander, CEO of Orange UK, said:

Orange is proud to be leading the industry into the next decade by announcing a new standard in voice innovation that will transform the mobile experience for customers in the UK. HD Voice really does inject a level of innovation into mobile phone calls, making it sound as if callers are actually in the same room. Once people have tried it, they won’t want to go back.

In early December, Sony Ericsson announced two HD Voice ready phones, the Elm and the Hazel. The phones are expected to be available in the second quarter of 2010