Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has launched its ?The Mobile HD voice: Global Update report?. This report provides market facts and a status summary of mobile HD voice operator commitments, service deployments on 2G, high speed packet access (HSPA) and long term evolution (LTE) networks or voice over LTE (VoLTE), commercial launches worldwide, and the maturing adaptive multi rate wideband (W-AMR) enabled, mobile HD voice user devices ecosystem.
According to the report, 116 mobile operators in 75 countries have commercially launched high definition (HD) voice services. Further, the number of mobile operators now offering HD voice services is more than 30 per cent higher than a year ago.
Mobile HD voice uses W-AMR technology, enabling high-quality voice calls in supporting mobile networks and an improved user experience for calls between mobile phones supporting the feature.
HD voice service is commercially available in Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep., Denmark, Dominican Rep., Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, R?union, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, Uganda, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States of America.
The majority of operators offer HD voice service over a single radio access network. However, some offer the service over more than one network system. The breakdown of radio access network technologies that are used to deliver commercial HD voice service is as follows:
- 95 HD voice operators use 3G/HSPA network
- 9 HD voice operators use LTE
- 2 HD voice operators use GSM
- 8 HD voice operators use GSM and HSPA networks
- 2 HD voice operators use HSPA and LTE networks with VoLTE
- 116 Total mobile HD voice operators
In terms of the system technology, statistics are the following:
- 105 HD voice operators use 3G/HSPA networks
- 10 HD voice operator use 2G/GSM networks
- 11 HD voice operator use 4G/LTE networks
Globally, 71 operators are investing in VoLTE studies, trials or deployments, including 11 that have commercially launched HD voice service. The number of HD voice launches enabled by VoLTE is forecasted to reach 19 by end-2014 and then double in 2015.
